Although that maid named Ilina seemed quite timid and frightened of
Lorist slept very soundly that night. Perhaps it was because he had finally returned home — he slept deeply and peacefully, not stirring until broad daylight.
The cheerful chirping of birds woke Lorist. He got out of bed and walked to the window. On a branch not far off, two small birds were singing their hearts out, their voices ringing clear. Beyond them, a thin layer of white mist drifted lazily among the maple groves, and many of the manor castle's buildings rose and fell within the pale haze, appearing and disappearing like ghosts…
A stack of brand-new robes sat beside the bed — presumably brought over by that maid Ilina. Lorist put on the robes and was about to head downstairs when he noticed Ilina curled up on the rug beside the sofa, a thin blanket draped over her small frame, fast asleep and dreaming of something. A contented smile hung on her pale little face…
Lorist paused for a moment, then turned back to fetch a fresh quilt from the bed and gently laid it over the tiny maid before tiptoeing downstairs.
The stairs led down to a sitting room and a study. The saber Lorist had brought down last night rested on the sitting room table. He picked it up and walked to the far end of the corridor. Just as he was about to descend the next flight of stairs, a door nearby opened and Patte poked his head out. "Good morning, My Lord. Heading down to train? I'll come along."
Lorist nodded, and the two went downstairs together to begin their daily morning practice.
A burly, stockily built man watched Lorist and Patte go through the eight basic swordwork stances over and over again, looking thoroughly bored. He yawned mightily, picked up a plank of wood, and started sawing it.
"My Lord, that's the cook's son," Patte said to Lorist, glancing at the man.
Lorist looked up and saw the man busily sawing wood, so he nodded to Patte, indicating that he understood.
Sedecamp also went downstairs, greeted the man, then made his way to the well at the corner of the courtyard to draw water and wash his face. After a while, a servant came over and spoke with him at length. Sedecamp nodded, and only then did the servant leave.
Once Lorist and Patte finished their training, Sedecamp came up to report. He had just received word from old Steward Kreis. That evening, the great dining hall was to be used for the formal ceremony of Lorist assuming his title and the family's lands. Lorist should therefore spend the day touring the manor castle and familiarizing himself with it—as long as he didn't wander too far.
Lorist nodded. After breakfast, he took Patte and Sedecamp with him, led three Zeno horses out of the stable, and the three mounted up and began a slow ride around the manor castle grounds.
Judging by the terrain, the
Sedecamp rode up a small hillock and pointed east. "My Lord, look—that's Northfield Town."
Northfield Town was not far from the Norton Family's manor castle. It sat on a small stone hill. The strangest thing about the hill was a fountain right in its center, and Northfield Town had used that fountain as the basis for its continuous expansion.
"How many people are in Northfield Town now?" Lorist asked, gazing at the town in the distance.
Sedecamp shook his head—even a simple question like that he could not answer. "My Lord, I'm not sure either. Northfield Town hasn't conducted a population census in many years…"
Such a large town should have been a powerful source of material supply and manpower support for the manor castle. Instead, it stood on the opposing side. The Norton ancestors had left their descendants quite the dilemma. Lorist stroked his chin in thought, wondering how to deal with that garrison force…
"Wait, isn't that Willig Sang? What are they doing?" Sedecamp asked.
Lorist turned to look and saw Willig Sang and another servant lowering large bamboo baskets, filled with something unknown, from the edge of the rocky cliff.
"Let's go see," Lorist said.
The three men rode down from the small hillock, circumventing several rows of grapevines and a few thickets, and arrived at Willig Sang's side.
"Oh, so the slave camp moved here. No wonder I didn't see them in the open field before the castle when we came back. I thought they had gone there," Sedecamp realized with a start.
Lorist was also surprised, though not particularly shocked. Before him lay a sunken, low-lying area, tightly adjoining the white rock formation. Sheltered by the nearby terrain and hidden by the trees, the place remained unknown to outsiders.
This hollow was packed with tattered tents and shanties built of wood. Many raggedly dressed women and children were gathered around where Willig Sang was lowering the bamboo baskets, waiting for the person distributing bread to hand it out to them...
Willig Sang and the servant had brought about a dozen large bamboo baskets, each filled with black bread loots that were a foot long and wrist-thick. The bread was dense and hard. Willig Sang was talking to someone below: "This is your two-day food ration. You won't get more until the day after tomorrow. There's business at the manor these next couple of days, so I won't be coming. What business? It's our Second Young Master returning to inherit the territory and title. It's caused a huge panic and chaos in the castle..."
Suddenly, someone appeared at his side, startling Willig Sang. But Lorist ignored him, instead staring intently at the person below for a long while before asking: "Who are you? How did you get in? Why are you hiding in here?"
The person Lorist had focused on below stopped distributing bread to the others, tossed the bamboo basket in his hands to someone nearby, and looked up at Lorist.
"He... he's called Patchiko. Wh-why are you asking about him?" Willig Sang stammered timidly from the side.
The man called Patchiko climbed up from below in two or three quick motions, stood up, and dusted off his hands. "Willig Sang, he's got sharper eyes than you. He knew I was Silver-rank, which is why he asked."
Willig Sang said confusedly, "Everyone knows you're Silver-rank. It's not like it's anything special."
Sedecamp rode his horse over. "His Lordship wouldn't know, though. My lord, I know this man. To be precise, he was the eldest young master's captive. The eldest young master thought highly of him and intended to take him on as a Family Knight upon his return. Who would have guessed the eldest young master would never come back? We wanted to release him, but he insisted on honoring the agreement he'd made with the eldest young master — that even if the eldest young master didn't return to recruit him as a Family Knight, he would still have to serve the family for three full years before earning his freedom."
After explaining the situation to Lorist, Sedecamp asked curiously, "Patchiko, hasn't it been well over three years? Why are you still here?"
Patchiko's face twisted with bitterness. "I was utterly ruined by Miss Baisha..."
Willig Sang, who actually knew the full story, provided some additional explanation from the side, and only then did Lorist understand the whole affair.
It had been the latter half of the year before last. Patchiko was just half a year away from earning his freedom when Miss Baisha came along and dumped a handmaiden on him, so he happily accepted her. Sure enough, less than three months later, the girl's belly was swelling. Patchiko found it strange, and upon making inquiries, learned that this handmaiden was the very one who had borne the eldest young master an illegitimate child. Miss Baisha wanted the child to acknowledge her as its mother, but felt it unsafe to keep the handmaiden by her side. Remembering that Patchiko would be leaving in half a year, she gave the girl to him, hoping he would take her away when the time came.
As it turned out, the handmaiden's belly grew big once more. Patchiko was no noble lord — an extra bastard child or one fewer meant nothing to him. Having a woman willing to bear him a child was the happiest thing in the world for Patchiko, and so he instantly became a slave to the unborn baby, spending his days circling around the woman's belly, scrounging up tasty food and fun trinkets, doing everything he could for the child.
Now that the child had been born, Patchiko had become a model father, working himself to the bone for the kid's future. To earn a little extra money, he had gone to Old Steward Kreis and taken on the job of managing the slave camp as well. The last time Viscount Kenmais attacked the family's manor castle, Patchiko had been on the castle walls too, blocking the charges of several Silver-rank mercenaries and even cutting down two of them — looking more like a Norton Family knight than Miss Baisha herself.
Lorist nodded and said to Patchiko, "Sir Patchiko, if you are willing to become my knight, please come to the dining hall tonight to attend my inheritance ceremony. Having a man of such noble character become our Family Knight would be an honor for the Norton Family."
……
That evening, in the great dining hall, ablaze with candlelight.
In truth, Lorist's inheritance ceremony was exceedingly simple — far simpler than he had imagined.
On the front wall of the great dining hall hung a banner bearing the rose-petal-horn-and-crown heraldic crest of the former Krisen Empire's royal house. Before the banner rested the longsword that the founding emperor of the Krisen Empire had bestowed upon the Norton Family's first landed Baron over two hundred years ago. Flanking the banner, the Norton Family's raging bear crest hung to the left, and to the right hung a large detailed map of the Norton Family's entire fief.
At Old Steward Kreis's prompting, Lorist stepped forward alone, dropped to one knee before the longsword, and declared, "Before the witness of all the gods, I, Lorist Norton, eighth-generation scion of the Norton Family, repeat the oath of my ancestors before the Krisen royal house's rose-and-horn banner: We shall guard the northern frontier for the Empire. We shall wait in silence for the call of the imperial throne once more. We shall carry on the glory of our ancestors. The Norton Family shall bend its knee to none but the Krisen imperial house and the Norton Family's forebears…"
Lorist rose, took the longsword from the table before him, and lifted it high overhead. Then he turned to face everyone standing at the rear of the great dining hall.
At first there were a few scattered claps, then the applause grew louder and louder, until finally everyone was clapping and cheering. From that moment on, Lorist became the new head of the Norton Family — the new Baron Norton.
Miss Baisha was furious, because Patchiko and Pat had stolen her thunder by becoming Lorist's Family Knights before she could. The young miss had no choice but to step forward in resignation, bow to Lorist, and become the third Norton Family Knight in the dining hall.
Lorist announced three matters. The first was to reorganize the garrison defending the family's manor castle. The current guards were all veteran family soldiers in their thirties and forties — some had even already retired. But because the Norton Family had suffered defeat after defeat and lost all its active-duty fighting strength, these old family soldiers had been forced to don their armor once more to defend the manor castle.
Lorist now planned to recruit a hundred and twenty new people at the manor, aged between sixteen and twenty-five, and promised to help them awaken their combat force within three months to half a year, since he possessed the newest and simplest basic combat force training methods.
Lorist smiled. If there was one thing he had in abundance, it was money!
Sedecamp brought several servants to carry in two chests. Once the lids were opened, the golden gleam dazzled everyone's eyes. The two chests together held ten thousand gold Fordes — they had been brought on the wagon, and now they had finally come in handy.
The eldest miss was left with nothing to say. Lorist ordered Pat to take charge of recruiting and training the bodyguard squad.
Before making his second announcement, Lorist had all of Old Baron Norton's illegitimate children gathered together. His second matter concerned these father's illegitimate children.
Lorist declared that as their half-brother, the most he could do for them was provide them with a proper noble education. If their combat force could reach the Silver tier, they would then have the choice of serving the family or venturing out on their own. If they chose to serve the family, they could bear the Norton name and might even become a branch of the Norton Family in the future.
The final matter was that Lorist announced that the newly appointed Family Knight, Patchiko, would lead the slaves to a different location to construct a military fortress. The location was to be kept secret for now, but anyone with ambition from the manor castle was welcome to join them.
After making all three announcements, Lorist sent old Steward Kreis on his way first, leaving the furious Miss Baisha — who had been itching to give him an earful — absolutely livid.