Thaumaturge

by Terry Mancour

  The Wilderlord, Sir Sarlon the Strong, had extreme difficulties adapting to the new scheme. Raised on the frontier between Alshar and Castal, he approached the founding of his new manor like a Riverlord . . . and that chafed at the Hundred he recruited to settle a domain between Baelor Tower and the village of Alton, just outside of the plateau. That made him my neighbor, so I had an excellent opportunity to witness Sir Sarlon’s downfall the first year of my reign.

  The land he’d purchased wasn’t prime agricultural land, but it had a good river on its western frontier and it had supported four or five smallholdings, before the Invasion. Sir Sarlon and his household bravely led a Hundred from Vanador there a few weeks after my meeting with Gareth to re-inhabit the abandoned estates and reclaim the lands. He took the largest estate for himself and renamed it Sarlon Manor because he was just like that. He had aspirations of being a wool merchant, in consideration of the mediocre quality of the soil, and purchased a vast herd of two hundred sheep from Vorone with which to bribe his new tenants.

  For the first few months things went well enough, as Sarlon’s folk established new homes and began clearing fields. But then Sarlon started to get anxious about their progress, despite the difficulty of the task. He found his own household inattentive to their fields and flocks, and was forced to hire men to improve his holding. He quickly became concerned with the demands for coin his peasants made of him for their labor – not a payment at Luin’s Day, after the harvest, they were demanding to be paid daily or weekly for their work . . . and at a stiff rate, too. While he was comparatively wealthy, he found his outflow was dwarfing his income much faster than he’d anticipated. Compounding that worry was the sheer temerity of peasants refusing to cooperate with the manor lord.

  The problem was that while his peasants were dutifully doing the basic boon work they owed under the charter (usually they devoted only one day a week to the manor as part of their rent) the rest of the time they were strangely absent, despite his repeated calls for labor. Sir Sarlon had expected to hire them to work on his manor for the reasonable wage of two pennies a day, half paid in kind and half paid in coin on Luin’s Day, as was traditional in the south. Very few of his Hundred applied, to his dismay.

  Upon investigation, he discovered why: they were sneaking off to Alton village to work for hard wages.

  Alton was one of the few large villages to survive the Invasion, and the sudden influx of settlers and coin had doubled its size and seen it boom, economically. A family of tilers there found themselves flooded with work for all the new homes in Vanador, and hired lavishly to fulfill the orders coming from Vanador, once the clay pits thawed enough to mine them. Sir Sarlon discovered that his folk could easily find work for six or seven pennies a day, there, far more than the two pennies he promised. More importantly, they were paid with coin at the end of the day, not in kind, or at the end of harvest season.

  That wasn’t the worst part, for Sarlon. The worst part of was his discovery that the wretches had the nerve to spend a full penny of their wages on the luxury of bread from Alton’s small bakery, before they trudged back to Sarlon Manor at nightfall. That was particularly galling, as it deprived Sarlon of the income he charged for grinding their grain at the manor’s little horse mill, and the fee he took for forcing them to bake at the manor’s ovens. The captive market the local peasants comprised is the mainstay of most estates. With half his workforce bringing in bread from Alton, Sarlon’s receipts were lagging dreadfully.

  That’s what brought him to Gareth’s office, toward the end of spring. He wanted someone to do something, and he appealed to Gareth for aid. The poor steward was forced to listen to a litany of complaints, beginning with the issue of the bread, the demands for coin, and the reluctance of his Hundred to work his claim, and continued on to how displeased Sir Sarlon was with the general manner the Wilderlands peasants displayed here in the north. They just weren’t properly servile, he complained.

  Gareth was unhelpful. He was managing a barony, not every little estate. He gently suggested Sir Sarlon consider negotiating with them in a reasonable manner. That didn’t suit the knight at all. Instead, he confronted them.

  First, Sir Sarlon sent his bailiff, one of his Riverlands gentlemen, to lecture them about their dismal lack of loyalty to the manor’s mill and ovens, and their unseemly demands for unreasonable payment. The bailiff received nothing but jeers and objections, which were swiftly relayed to Sarlon. The next day, he sent the bailiff back with instruction to summon ten representatives of the Hundred to the manorial court to answer to his complaints.

  The tithe of men who appeared at court were appalled. In answer to the knight’s tirade, they insisted that they did their boon work – they were under no obligation to work for him elsewise. They were free to find better employment to improve their holdings on their free days, for hard coin, promptly paid, not for the promise of a penny and a measure of wheat. If a day spent toiling in the tile works paid thrice what the manor did, and in cash, they argued, it made no sense for them to work at the manor. Sarlon was welcome to match the wage and terms, they said, but they would not be compelled by tradition.

  Though they tried to explain the economics of the matter to him, he was infuriated by the situation. Seeking to intimidate them, he fined every man there a penny for contempt. Expecting to see them plea with him over the arbitrary and expensive fine, instead Sarlon watched every man there pay a shiny Knot at once, from purses far heavier than his own, and then leave the court without another word.

  After that, the attitude of Sarlon’s Hundred toward its lord changed dramatically. If Sir Sarlon had a problem finding labor before, after the so-called Ten-Penny Rebellion few of the villagers would consider his offers. The tale became a popular local parable that demonstrated the character of the Vanadori.

  All summer long, the feud continued between the two parties. Sarlon tried repeatedly to compel work from his people, at his wages, and they repeatedly refused. He attempted to levy and impose further fines, but then had a difficult time collecting them.

  For their part, the weekly boon work for the manor was conducted in a slovenly and uninspired manner. Sarlon’s herds and beasts began to escape from their fields, as fences weren’t mended properly, leading to the embarrassed knight having to pay a fee to the manor’s hayward. Worse, the industrious peasants began raising prices on the material purchased from them by the manor. Citing higher demand in Alton’s market, the prices he paid for firewood, milk, eggs, and other staples began going up . . . if he could get them at all, without going to market himself.

  Finally, beset by his creditors, facing chaos in his pens and gardens, and with his fields becoming overcome by weeds, Sarlon escalated the feud. He demanded that the peasants pay their annual rent accounts in full at Midsummer, not at Luin’s Day, as was traditional. He expected them to capitulate by working off the balance on his lands. Instead, the Hundred took stock of its collective monies and paid the entire sum in silver, as demanded.

  That perplexed the knight. And doomed him. While I’m certain that the influx of silver was helpful to Sir Sarlon’s flagging accounts, it also removed the major impetus for the peasantry to work so hard at mowing and harvest. Usually, looming rent payments inspire volunteers to appear for service at the manor during the important times, with the knowledge that any additional wages earned could go toward stock and feed to get them through the winter. With the unexpected amount of coin the Sarlon Manor folk had accumulated, and with their rents fully paid, that impetus was gone.

  All summer long, Sarlon railed at them while paying their demands for wages only when he had no choice. He raised the price of grain from the manor storehouse, raised the price of milling and baking, and did little but send business to Alton’s baker. To further disrupt their incomes, he declared a week-long militia training for the Hundred a few weeks after Midsummer, seeking to break their spirit through drilling and combat. They gritted their teeth and complied. While their husbands were d
rilling, however, the wives spent the entire week processing flax and spinning.

  After the Midsummer payment and militia training, however, Sarlon thought that he’d bested them. He bragged of his peasants’ broken spirits to all, during a shopping trip to Vanador. I know, because he sought me out to get my advice, complain . . . and perhaps obtain some relief against the reality of a competitive labor market from his Count. Indeed, he all but begged me to forbid his folk from working in Alton, or buying their bread there.

  I listened, but was singularly unhelpful. The Sarlon Manor peasants were well within their rights, according to their charter. Changing the rules to benefit Sir Sarlon wasn’t fair, nor was it prudent. The most I would pledge was to review the situation at harvest. I had one of the Field Wizards visit the estate, ostensibly as aid but more properly to spy on the situation and deliver a report. I didn’t need any sudden, violent peasant rebellions my first year as Count.

  Thankfully, the Wilderfolk are not as rash as Wilderlords. They didn’t violently revolt, even in the face of such acrimony. Nor But neither did they capitulate to the manor. While he was bragging and complaining to me, they were conspiring not to rebel, but to compete against the man. They out-performed Sir Sarlon.

  First, they redoubled their efforts to secure lucrative wages outside of the estate. While the tiler of Alton needed only a score of men to dig, shape and fire his tiles, there was plenty of other good work to be done at Alton, and at good price. Seeing opportunity, instead of spending their time individually tending their sheep, the Hundred organized and paid a few of their number to keep them moving from pasture to pasture while the others worked in the village.

  They paid the shepherds so well for their time that Sir Sarlon simply could not compete to hire them for his own flock, even if they were willing. More, the larger herds crapped valuable fertilizer in the peasant’s fields in volume, enriching them tremendously as they ate them bare. A few enterprising men used their extra coin to purchase stock from their neighbors, or more rarely at market, to increase their personal herds. But Sarlon’s herd faltered, as strays were lost and the sheep poorly tended.

  More, the market for textiles in Vanador was booming, particularly for the homespun linens a thousand new households needed. Dozens of wives spent their evening hours spinning wild flax into thread, for which they could fetch up to a penny a spool in Alton’s market. An enterprising peasant household in Sarlon could make as much as ten or twelve pennies a day, after expenses, the Field Wizard Marthus, reported.

  When sheep-washing time came in late summer, Sir Sarlon himself had to help drag his unruly, filthy herd into the river, because he could afford to hire only a few men at the unreasonable rate of five pennies a day for the brutal work. That particular chore isn’t counted as boon work, owed as part of rent, it’s day-work, for some reason. Thankfully for his dignity, Sarlon’s herd had decreased in size as his bailiff had sold off sheep from it to his tenants to cover the manor’s growing expenses.

  Disaster struck at High Summer for Sarlon, however, when only a third of his meadows got mowed. That sileage was vital for getting his flock through the winter after shearing. Unable to afford the cost of a wizard to do it, he relied on hand-scything the broad meadows. At that point, his treasury was dry, and he was forced to go in debt to hire the few men he could to complete the important task. Not only did his flock need the fodder for the winter, but his horses, which were the bulk of his wealth, required hay . . . a lot of hay.

  The peasants of Sarlon Manor, however, were better organized than their lord. They’d made the acquaintance of a wizard from Baelor Tower who was willing to use a Haying wand on their meadows, as well as cutting their grain at harvest and sheering their flock, for the promise of three sacks of premium wool at harvest. While that was a high price, it was worth it to the peasants to condense the days of labor down to one and get back to paying work.

  But a fourth sack ensured that he would not extend his services to the manor lord’s meadows. At any price.

  I don’t blame the mage. For him, it was a pleasant day in the country, waving a wand in the air for a decent fee. He was able to cut a field in minutes, and move on to the next while labor parties dried and gathered the sileage. The owner of the field usually presented him a mug of stout ale in gratitude, above the agreed-upon fee, or perhaps some eggs or butter. By the end of the day, he’d cut more than ninety acres of meadow across the estate. None of it belonged to Sarlon.

  By harvest, things were looking dire for the manor. When accounts were taken, it was clear that Sir Sarlon could keep half of his sheep or a third of his horses, but not both, without buying more hay. He elected to sell the sheep, after shearing, hoping to replenish the herd in the spring. He found a ready buyer in Sarlon’s rising wool magnate, one of the men he’d originally fined in the Ten-Penny Rebellion.

  The man gladly helped Sarlon sheer them the old-fashioned way, at six pennies a day, and then took his pick of the flock, paying the difference in much-needed silver. Meanwhile, the wizard from Baelor had sheered the Hundred’s entire flock in a few hours with a shearing collar, taking his fee in kind, as agreed.

  Usually, the peasants of a manor sell their wool to the manor, who sells it at market. The Sarlon Manor peasants, however, decided to transport and sell their wool themselves, spitefully depriving Sir Sarlon of any potential profit. Indeed, after paying him the in-kind payments that were the last part of their rent, the Hundred collectively sold the rest of their wool to a merchant from Vorone at the Vanador market, for a premium price. Sarlon could only afford to sell at Alton’s market, at a discount. To his chagrin, his buyer was his own tenant, who made a profit when he included Sarlon’s wool with the others’ sacks.

  The Baelor wizard’s third visit to Sarlon Manor in autumn was the final straw. As tradition dictated, the first three days of harvest were boon days, and the peasantry dutifully turned out to scythe Sarlon’s fields and stack his grain. He worked them mercilessly, and by all accounts the midday meal, traditionally a feast to reward the hard work, was meager. Sarlon hoped, it seemed, that tiring the obstinate farmers would slow their own harvest.

  Instead, the wizard cut the grain all in a day, and within three days the fields of the peasantry were gleaned, stubbled pastures ready for geese and sheep. The peasants stacked and distributed their bounty of grain far more quickly than they had for their lord. The new barns were filled to their rafters with barley and wheat. More, the magical process left far fewer grains on the ground than traditional scything.

  All across the plateau that summer grain burst forth from the soil in abundance, and where it was well-managed, the harvest that autumn exceeded anyone’s expectations. On Luin’s Day, the peasants of Sarlon Manor had enough grain to get comfortably through the winter and have plenty left for seed in the Spring.

  Unfortunately for Sarlon himself, Luin’s Day was also the day for settling annual accounts. Usually a manor collects any money rents left from its tenants on Luin’s Day, and pays out any of them that the manor owed in coin. Then the merchants and artisans the manor owed would appear and get paid from the profits.

  Only there weren’t any. Even with his receipts from the wool, Sarlon didn’t have enough to even pay out what he owed his own tenants, much less his creditors. The rents he’d collected at Midsummer were long spent. Sarlon owed no less than thirty ounces of silver to his tenants for paid labor they’d reluctantly agreed to credit to the manor. When he couldn’t pay it, the Hundred convened and began the process of buying him out.

  That was just outrageous to the man who had been bragging at Midsummer. It was bad enough that he’d been driven to ruin by a gang of ignorant, wily Wilderlands peasants. It was absolutely humiliating to discover that they not only were pressing him for a measly thirty ounces of silver, but that they’d had the temerity to buy out his debt from his other creditors, too. Faced with a magistrate’s summons to pay his debts, he had no choice but to sell nearly the last of the manor’s her
ds, all but two of his horses, and a suit of armor . . . and still came up short.

  Instead, the Sarlon Hundred proposed the unseemly counter offer that Sarlon sign over his remaining interest in the enterprise to the Hundred and quit the agricultural life. It was either that or become the poorest resident of the manor.

  Sir Sarlon sold, and eventually entered my service as a cavalryman, but he never forgave the peasants whom he felt had betrayed him. As for the peasants of his estate, they went on to become even more prosperous, once the tribulations of autumn were over and their lands were safe.

  But in teaching them cooperative farming and the advantage of pooled resources, Gareth had also taught the peasants of the Hundreds how to get along quite nicely without a lord telling them what to do and picking their pockets every chance he got. Sarlon Manor retained the name, as a parting insult to their former lord, and the Ten-Penny Rebellion became a standard tale to illustrate how nobility in no way protects a man from stupidity.

  ***

  As directed, Gareth dutifully allowed himself to be wined and feasted by the agents of the League that week in spring while they began to assess Vanador for future commerce. As directed, he gave me a full report. The merchants expressed appropriate astonishment at the rather large town that had appeared so suddenly in the middle of nowhere, and even more so at the strange inhabitants and odd customs. Gareth gave them a tour of some of his more promising projects and spent an entire market day with them.

  In the course of two weeks he accepted a few small presents from his guests, but turned down more elaborate gifts of coin and wine, protesting a sufficiency of the former and a refined taste in the latter. When they expressed concern that few of the sheep shears and other gear they’d brought to market were selling very briskly, despite the number of flocks on the plateau, Gareth showed them the fleecing collars and chuckled as they squirmed about their useless inventory.