Taking the longest bundle in his hands, he gave it to the knight. "This is for you."

Sir Tuilas unrolled the cloth to find a sheathed sword inside, and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Perhaps we don't have craftsmen as good as those in Cinran," Kivamus smiled, "but this is still a brand new sword, which I had our blacksmith make specially for you. It even has your name carved on the blade."

Sir Tuilas brought the sword closer to see it, before he grinned for the first time since he had arrived. "Thank you, milord. I'm sure it will be very useful in separating Binpaazi heads from the rest of their bodies."

Kivamus chuckled at the audacious knight before turning to the old tax collector, and offered him a much smaller package.

Ustaimo opened it, and a small pocket-sized ledger made of paper came out. "This... this must have been costly!"

Kivamus grinned, not revealing the fact that it was made from paper created right here in the village. He had Leah sew up a small bundle of it, after cutting a bigger sized sheet of paper into 4 to 6 smaller sized rectangular pages. It had only taken them a few regular-sized sheets, but the result had been a small sized notebook which had enough pages to last a while.

"Don't worry about the cost," he grinned. "I know you must be called regularly by the count to give reports on his finances, so this small ledger should be useful for you to make small notes and write such numbers."

"Of course," Ustaimo gave a smile. "I will put it to good use!"

Lastly, Kivamus picked up the final package from the servant, before handing it to the knight. "This is a small gift for Count Ebirtas."

Sir Tuilas opened it, and found a finely crafted warbow inside. "This... This is exquisite! Where did you even get it?"

Kivamus shrugged, hiding the fact that he had asked Darora to make another warbow by putting all his other tasks on hold, and to make intricate carvings and designs on it, as was common on nearly everything which the higher ranked nobles used. However, they simply couldn't reveal that they had a talented craftsman capable of making a warbow here, since with the tensions running high in the east Darora would surely be asked to serve the Count from now.

"Oh, just a merchant who'd visited us from Kirnos," he replied. "It wasn't cheap, but I hope the Count will like it."

The knight smiled, as he gave the bundle to another guard who had come with him to keep in their wagon. "Uncle Ebirtas really likes collecting luxury items, and this is no less than that. I'm sure he'll be pleased."

"Well, let's hope so," Kivamus replied, as the knight's guards and his squire climbed on the wagon.

"May the goddess smile upon your village," Ustaimo wished, before he took his place on the wagon.

The knight gave him a final nod, before he mounted his horse as well, and with that, the tax collector and his protection group began moving towards the gates of the manor.

Before long, the wagon had exited the manor and turned to the right, to exit the village from the northeastern gates on their journey to Cinran.

Kivamus exhaled loudly, finally feeling relieved that his worries about tax payment were over and the knight was soon going to be out of the village. "Well, that went well."

Hudan shook his head in wonder while looking at him. "I still can't believe you managed to make them think that Levalas is dying..."

"All credit goes to Feroy for this," Kivamus said as he started laughing, remembering everything which had happened in the night, before Duvas and the guard captain joined him as well.

After his decision that he wanted to give Levalas a second chance, Feroy had suggested that they make it seem like the young man had started a drunken brawl and gotten mortally injured during it. They did have to give some real wounds to him as well as another couple of guards to make it seem more genuine, but all those were surface wounds and would easily heal in a couple of days, especially with the use of their remaining losuvil based medicine. The former mercenary had even used some fresh blood from a wolf they had killed after it had strayed too close to the village walls in the night to make the wounds seem even more serious than it was.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

After everything was done, they had called up the knight and the tax collector and told them an elaborate story about the brawl which had gotten out of control. Tuilas had immediately decided that Levalas wouldn't survive for long after seeing that much blood, and had said that there was no point in trying to take him back to Cinran's herbalists, since the guard wouldn't live long enough to survive the two-day journey anyway.

Thankfully, everything had worked out for the better, and the knight had returned to Cinran with the news that two of his four guards were dead, including Dosol and Levalo. That news would certainly reach Zoricus' ears, but the baron would have no reason to believe that Tuilas might be lying, and the greedy bastard might even be happy to know that Levalas had perished and wouldn't be able to tell anyone about the assassination plot.

Somehow getting his laughter in control, Kivamus looked at the guard captain. "Where is Feroy anyway?"

"Oh, he went to the eastern hills to scout them and see if there are any recent signs of someone being there. We've already been keeping two guards there for scouting and to get an early warning of Torhan's raid, but none of them match the skills of Feroy in a forest."

"Will he also start staying out in the nights from now on?" Duvas asked.

Hudan nodded. "He has to. We can't afford to be caught unaware if Torhan arrives with all his bandits." He shrugged. "I just hope it happens soon. It's not that I want our village to be raided, but all this waiting is making the guards too tense and agitated. It's not good for their morale."

Kivamus frowned, glancing at the gate guards who had bunched together and had been talking to each other with a nervous voice. "I know what you mean... It's also been more than ten days since we stopped sending guards out for hunting. We really can't afford to do this for too long, especially now that our food stores are nearly empty."

"How about we send some scouts further?" Hudan suggested. "Perhaps a half day journey towards Kirnos..."

Kivamus shook his head. "It is too risky. It's not like Torhan would use the road to travel here, but even at best we will only get the news that he is coming soon, which we already know, so it wouldn't help us that much. But if that guard gets captured, perhaps by a single arrow striking his horse, the bandits can force him to tell a lot more about our defenses, which will really hurt us."

Hudan sighed. "You are right. Well, I'll go and make a visit to all the village gates to see how our guards are doing. I'll also tell the women guards on the watchtowers to start keeping the crossbows in the open now."

"Go on then," Kivamus nodded, before looking at the majordomo. "How is it going with the sowing?"

"The seed drills have been wonderful," Duvas reported with a grin. "The farming foreman Pinoto told me that we have already sown around a third of the total cleared area. He was grumbling that he needed more seed drills to use, but even with the dozen we already have, we'll be able to complete sowing the full area in perhaps two weeks. This is with just around 30 farmers in total! Perhaps a dozen more, if you include those who are transporting the seeds to the farms and those who are using the horses to plow the remaining fields even now. Still, I'm no farmer, but even I didn't expect that we would ever be able to grow enough wheat to feed the whole village using just a small fraction of the population."

Kivamus snorted. "This is still too high, you know? Above 40 men and women being used for farming from our population of around 400, means we are using more than 10% of the population for farming. Even then we likely won't be able to feed everyone from the harvested grain, especially if our population keeps increasing. Ideally I want to reach a stage where only around one percent of the population being engaged in farming is enough to feed everyone, but that will take a long time. Still, I agree that it is a big improvement from what is common elsewhere in this kingdom. If we had to use above 200 workers for this, like Pinoto had estimated, we simply wouldn't be able to mine any more coal - which is not an option for us."

Duvas nodded. "Yeah, that's one of the reasons the previous baron never even tried to start any farming here." He added, "Pinoto told me that he would still need around 30 workers - mainly those who have some experience in farming - to tend to the fields after the sowing is completed, but that is hardly a problem. We can afford to give 30 workers to him, but 200 men working there continuously just wouldn't be possible."

"Certainly. How's it going with the blacksmith and the carpenter? I didn't have enough time to ask them when I gave them the custom orders for the gifts."

"The new iron shipment will help us a lot. Like you wanted, I told Cedoron to make ten more fine meshes first, so Darora can fix them on the frames for new moulds and deckles to increase our rate of making paper. Once the blacksmith is done with it, he will make half a dozen new safety lamps for the coal mines. The miners are making do for now by transferring the few safety lamps they have to each mineshaft again and again to check for any dangerous gas before they start using tallow candles for light, but having enough safety lamps will save the time wasted in transferring the lamps, and will help to increase our coal production."

The majordomo continued, "All that should only take a few more days, since Cedoron can hand over most of those things to his apprentices now. After that he'll start forging the iron parts for new crossbows. Darora already has some wooden frames for them ready, while his apprentices are making more of the wooden parts every day. Once they start getting the iron parts from the blacksmith, they can start making more crossbows again."