It was July, or something like it. Soon enough the temperature would skyrocket. In the Middle Ages in Japan, this time of year was when all the work in the fields was done, and they called it “war season.” Farmers would be conscripted, armed with pikes, and used as foot soldiers. Wars weren’t so common in this world, so instead the farmers were roped into construction work for their territorial leader once summer rolled around. Last year they’d been set to work on irrigation channel maintenance, I heard, and this year the only change was that we were putting them on castle construction.
The castle was going to be kind of like the trademark image of the territory, so the village chief was treating the project with due seriousness.
“They probably won’t buy new enslaved criminals for a bit. If you put a bunch of them together all at once, you’re just asking for trouble if they ever stir things up. And if your neighbors find out you had to put down a slave rebellion, well. That doesn’t look too good, does it?”
“I guess you have a point. Although, you know, now this village is the kind of place that lets a slave serve as a knight, whatever that means.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you used to be a slave, Sir Slave!”
The dwarf laughed boisterously, but I couldn’t help frowning. The more I thought about it, there was no denying that I was exquisitely dressed for my ongoing adventures as literal, actual slave labor.
The early summer sun shone down on us, catching a glimmer on my belly-button piercing.
“It looks like some of the carpenters didn’t come today,” I noted. “Do you think they weren’t feeling well?”
“Certainly not! They’ve gone to build your new home, Sir Slave!”
“Really?”
“Of course. Didn’t you hear the village chief boasting about how they’d get the whole thing built in one day as soon as the materials were ready?”
I hadn’t heard about that, although she had told me that she would give me a new house as a reward if I beat the bull-kin chieftain—that is to say, if talks with the minotaurs went well. Alexandricia had also told me she was a talented earth mage, so I guess the implication might have been that she would take care of it herself. Huh.
“I bet they’ve made you a marvelous hunter shack.”
“I hope not! With two wives and a boarder, I’m going to need way more space to stay sane.”
“Oh, don’t you worry. We can’t have a knight living in some shabby old hut!” The dwarf laughed again.
It made me uncomfortable—I didn’t see what was so funny about what he’d said. But I put the feeling aside and just replied, “I guess not.”
At noon, Cassandra and Elpaco came over to let me know it was time for lunch.
I leaned back against a large boulder—I was lucky that they hadn’t moved it from the lakeshore—ready to dig in. Nishka joined us and we began our lunch break.
“What did you pack today?” Nishka asked.
Cassandra smiled. “You don’t get enough nutrition only eating steamed potatoes day after day, so today I made a green bean and rabbit stew. And some rye bread.”
“I’ve got jerky. There’s more wyvern meat than I know what to do with back at my place, so here. Take some! C’mon, take it!”
We had all been beaming expectantly over the food Cassandra laid out when Nishka unfolded her own filthy lunch cloth to trumpet her jerky. The rest of us wrinkled our noses.
For one, Cassandra had eaten smoked wyvern meat almost every day while I was gone and she looked like she was tired of it. For another, tough, stringy wyvern was beyond unappetizing. It was like a hole in the platonic concept of appetizing. Antipetizing. Elpaco’s usual vacant expression was gone and he had his eyes locked on the ground in front of him. Fuzzball was a hunter from the city, so you might think he’d be eager to try some wild country cuisine, but even he looked disgusted.
“C’mon, what’s with those faces? If meat makes you stronger, just imagine how it feels to get some Lizard King meat down that gullet! Eat up!”
“No, thank you,” said Cassandra delicately. “I’ve had my fill of wyvern lately.”
Elpaco nervously added, “I’m good, too, thanks.”
Nishka looked like she was about to have a major pout, so I reached out to take some of the jerky to make her feel better. It flapped unpleasantly in my hand. I don’t know how it did that, but it absolutely waggled.
“Shooter, wyvern meat is tough. It’s not good for your stomach,” Elpaco warned me quietly.
Once lunch was over, the promised workforce of builders arrived and gathered around. As always, since I wanted to convey that the work would be bearable, I joined in. Once we were all together, you couldn’t tell at a glance who was the leader and who were the workers. In fact, Cassandra was the one who looked like she was in charge of the whole worksite. She wore the clothes she’d made from the fine cloth I’d bought in town, and my shortsword was slung from her waist. I felt kind of pathetic in comparison.
I guess it didn’t matter that much, as long as the castle got built. A person’s appearance has nothing to do with how well they get their work done.
“All right, everyone,” I said. “Starting today, we’d like you to help out with building a castle on top of this hill here.”
Dead silence.
“The carpenters will handle the more complicated work,” I continued. “But we need your help to carry in the supplies.”
One man stepped forward, looked suspiciously at me, and said, “Awful rich, innit. A slave like you, daring to give us orders.”
In that instant, the dialogue between the workers and I turned ass-puckeringly sour.