Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Volume 6

by Funa

  Lined up on the ground before them were seventeen farmers, captured and bound. They were kicking up too much of a ruckus, so they had been gagged as well.

  The eleven soldiers stared at them in awe.

  It would seem that nine of the soldiers were normal recruits, one was a non-commissioned officer, and the last and highest-ranking was appointed. The final two were likely components of any assembled squad. Someone had to be counted upon to make the important calls, and such a duty could not be put on the shoulders of just any recruit.

  “Now then, I have one request,” said Mile.

  “A reward?” asked the commander. “I have no doubt that our groups clashing would have led to injuries—even deaths, if things went poorly. Though you came in as an interloper, the fact remains that you really did help us. Besides, since neither side was hurt, we don’t have to report that the farmers tried to use force against us. No one was harmed, and there was no military action to speak of, all thanks to the influence of a mysterious girl. Naturally, you have every right to demand a reward from our lord, good lady. We will report everything to him, so if you would like to travel along with us…”

  Indeed, there had fortunately been nothing that could be referred to as “military action.” Even without her interference, what would have broken out could have scarcely been called a “battle,” after all.

  Yet Mile merely shook her head.

  “I have no qualms with traveling with you, but what I request is not money. I wish you to make note that these farmers who I captured surrendered of their own volition. I get the impression that this was their intention from the start…”

  For a group of farmers to oppose a lord’s military forces was a controversial act. Had the matter been unavoidable, it would have been one thing, but their taxes had not been raised, nor were they higher than any other fief’s, and no one’s wives or daughters were being snatched away. They were merely refusing to pay their taxes—in an act of baseless, personal protest. Mile could not imagine that such people would be treated with kindness.

  “Yes, those men are citizens of this territory as well. I couldn’t bear to see anyone needlessly hanged, and doing so would only mean that our tax intake would decrease. I can’t see that being of benefit to our lord, either.”

  Hearing the commander’s dispassionate response, Mile thought to herself, I thought as much. Of course, this would not normally be the case. Normally, the farmers would be ruthlessly punished, made an example of to keep all the other villages in line. Was this commander particularly kind? Or was the lord of these lands just a good person?

  The farmers could only mumble, thanks to the gags in their mouths, but if they had been allowed to speak, then the conversation would be chaos. The commander removed the gag from only one of the farmers, who he deemed to be the leader. Seeing this, the other farmers thought to themselves, “Good. He will get across what we want to say,” and they all fell quiet.

  “Now then, why don’t we have a conversation? First off, am I correct to think of you as the leader of this bunch? Are you the official representative of this village?”

  The farmer, a man in his forties, replied, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m the son of the village elder and acting representative, while my old man’s sick in bed.”

  “So, why have you suddenly, unilaterally demanded that we lower your taxes? You have to have known that that would never fly.”

  “Heh. You can’t fool me! You know as well as I do that if enough of us farmers put the screws on him, our lord would have to listen to our demands!”

  “What?”

  Both Mile and the commander were stunned, unconsciously letting out a question in their confusion. Though the other soldiers had no voice in the matter, they were bewildered as well.

  “Ya see there? Bull’s eye! Look how they’re panicking!” the farmer gloated.

  However, the reason that Mile and the others were stunned was most decidedly not because the farmer’s analysis had hit the bull’s eye. Not anywhere near.

  “Wh-what precisely is this man going on about?”

  “I-I have no idea. Oy, you there! Mind telling me exactly how it is that you came to this conclusion?”

  “Heh heh. Fine. I’ll tell you exactly what it is that we know,” the farmer said, as he began his spiel. “Listen up. Now obviously, our lord lives off of the taxes that he collects from us peasants. The wages that you guys get paid and the money that goes to the Crown all comes from that too.”

  There were of course taxes levied on merchants and toll fees as well, but whatever, the commander and Mile thought. For the most part, what the man said was correct, and they both silently nodded.

  “So, if we say, ‘Lower our taxes,’ whaddya think happens?”

  “You’d be refused,” Mile immediately replied.

  “Well then, what if we say, ‘If you don’t do what we tell you, we won’t pay our taxes at all,’ then what?”

  “He sends out a suppression force.”

  This time Mile and the commander answered simultaneously.

  That much was an actual fact and a fair summary of their current situation. The commander himself was the leader of said subjugation force.

  Apparently, this commander had tried to resolve the situation through negotiation instead of force, but it would not be at all unusual for him, wishing to be able to count the suppression of an insurrection among his achievements, to have wiped out the farmer’s forces entirely.

  “Heh heh heh. You’d think so, right? But that’s nothin’ more than a bluff. If they really did capture and kill us, then they wouldn’t be able to collect taxes from us anyway. Even collecting slightly less taxes from us is better than gettin’ nothing. So, eventually, our argument’s gotta get through. Even just before, s’not like y’all rushed us. All you did was wave your swords around a bit. So, I think you understand this, too. Now then, you gonna hurry up and untie us or what?!”

  “………”

  Mile, the commander, and the other soldiers were stunned.

  “U-um…”

  Tepidly, Mile called out to the farmer.

  “If they were to allow such a thing, then rumors of this would spread, and all of the villages would start making these demands, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah. I mean, we already heard about that. That’s why we demanded it, too.”

  “………”

  The soldiers were silent. Mile continued.

  “Um, if it goes on like this, then, wouldn’t the tax income from every village decrease? If it looked like that was going to happen, then the people from the first village to demand it would be sold to the mines to make an example, and no other villagers would want to follow them after that, at which point the whole thing would end with no one’s taxes going down. Selling criminal slaves is incredibly profitable.”

  “Wh…?”

  This time it was the farmer, the son of the village elder, who was speechless.

  “N-no, I know what I heard. You can’t fool me! Long ago, in the village of Lobeton, they made their demands, and in the first year they paid nothing! And only thirty percent of what they had paid before after that…”

  “The village of Lobeton?”

  The commander seemed to have no idea what he was talking about, but the name rang familiar to Mile.

  “The village of Lobeton… I read about them in a book, once.”

  “Look, you see!”

  The farmer looked as though he had just caught an ogre by the neck. However, Mile’s tale was not yet finished.

  “In another kingdom, there is a village by that name. Apparently, as a result of their demanding that their taxes be lowered, every male in the village was slaughtered, from infant to elder. The village only survived because the lesser sons of the families in surrounding villages, who inherited no land of their own, moved in with their wives and kids in tow, and other unmarried men emigrated in to make wives of the widows and the woman who had still been too young to wed before the
massacre…

  “Because of all this, they were exempt from taxes during the year that immediately followed, and in the three years after that, they paid lowered rates. Starting with the fourth year after, it went back up to normal. In other words, the tale of the village of Lobeton is not one of a people who had their taxes lowered but a cautionary tale of a group of farmers and their folly, and what became of their final days…”

  “Wh…?”

  The son of the village elder, and all the other farmers, suddenly looked very uneasy.

  “I suppose in that case we would be the force summoned here to slaughter every man…”

  “Whaaaaaaaaaat?!”

  “H-hoifithoifithoifithoifitt!!!!!!!”

  At this, the farmers all cried out in terror.

  Truthfully, such a show of force had been ordered only if negotiation proved fruitless, and in this particular case, it was not a massacre they were aiming for; the soldiers had only planned to capture the farmers to be sold into labor. Killing them would not net the fief a single copper, whereas selling them would make straw into gold.

  The lord may have been kind, but he was also business-minded…

  “Now then, just who was it that told you such a strange story?” the commander asked the still horribly-shaken farmer; however, the man could no longer muster up the will to speak. Thinking that things were about to go very bad, very quickly, he finally opened his mouth.

  “I-It was six days ago…”

  According to the farmer’s story, six days ago, a man had arrived in the village on the brink of death. The villagers shared their food and water with him, and as a show of thanks, he told them about his own village’s plans to have their taxes reduced.

  Given that such a plan had no chance of working, this was clearly suspicious. As was the fact that the man had stayed in the village for only a single night, leaving the next morning…

  “For a swindler, there’s no profit in that plan, which means that his true goal was to get the village wiped out or to cause a schism between the village and your lord because of some sort of enmity, wouldn’t you think? Is this the work of an enemy? Has the village ever picked a fight with anyone? Have you ever tormented a family and driven them from the village, or has some villager ever murdered a traveling merchant and stolen his money? Or…”

  “A-absolutely not! No one here would do something so inhumane!” the village leader protested desperately, his face pale.

  “Well then, let’s expand this out a bit… What is the status of the other villages?” Mile asked the commander.

  “Well,” he replied, “We’ve only just received the missive from this village, demanding a reduction in their taxes and threatening a refusal to pay if we didn’t comply. There’s been nothing from the other villages thus far.”

  Of course, this had occurred only several days ago. It was possible that the proceedings in other villages had merely not progressed this far yet.

  “That man, or some associates of his, might be traveling around to the other villages, too. If you don’t act fast, then this sort of thing might…”

  Now, the commander’s face went pale.

  Understandably so. If multiple villages were to mount an opposition at once, this modest force would easily be overwhelmed. The Crown would begin to doubt the lord’s governing capabilities, or think that he was running the territory through some tyrannical means, and might intervene in the lord’s territories. The worst-case scenario would be that the lord’s household could be abolished.

  “Wh-what do we do?”

  Though he was an officer, the commander was still fairly low in rank. The lowest, in fact, as far as his class went. As nothing more than a member of the forces of a low-ranking noble, he had not exactly had any extensive training. Therefore, though he recognized that they were on the brink of a crisis, he was in no position to be making any snap decisions or taking immediate action. Instead, he was flustered.

  Seeing this, Mile decided to take the initiative. Finally the time had come to put to good use all the wisdom that she had cultivated from a lifetime of anime, manga, and literature.

  “First off, you need to dispatch one of your men to this village. Tell them that they have no need to worry, that you have heard these men’s opinions and that you are all heading off together to make a petition to your lord. Then, hurry back to the capital. Bring these men with you to keep the rumors from spreading. Inform your lord about the current situation and have him dispatch spies to every village in the territory at once. At that point, you’ll be able to gauge the current climate and locate your enemy’s hiding place. Well, I mean, of course, all that is up to your lord’s judgment. What you all need to prioritize right now is concealing the fact that you know what’s actually going on and then reporting it to the higher-ups as quickly as possible. Think you can manage?”

  “Y-yeah. Trimce, you catch all of that? To the village at once! The rest of you, straight to the capital!”

  The commander, who seemed to have worked his way up the ranks, was not so proficient when it came to suddenly making unexpected, crucial decisions, but if his compass was pointed in the correct direction, then he could at least follow its lead.

  ***

  “Oh dear, are you all right?”

  Along the highway near a village, a young girl came across a man sitting on the ground and called out to him.

  “O-oh, well, I slipped down a slope in the mountains and lost everything—my bags, my food, and my water. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in two days…”

  “What?! That’s dreadful. Please come back with me to my village. It’s just over there. We can give you food, water, and shelter for the night.”

  Her invitation extended, the girl led the man back to her home, not seeing the wicked grin on the man’s face behind her.

  “Thank you so very much! You’ve really saved me!”

  After drinking some water and partaking of a hot meal, the man cheerfully extended his thanks to the girl and her father and brothers.

  “Please, I must give you some reward for this… Unfortunately, I’ve lost all my belongings.”

  “It’s all right, we need no reward. In times of trouble, we look out for one another. If you can pay the favor forward and help someone else in trouble one day, then that’s enough for us,” said the father.

  The man showed exaggerated shock.

  “My, my! What an extraordinary person you are. I know! In exchange, why don’t I teach you how the people of my village persuaded our lord to lower the taxes that we owed him? To tell you honestly, we used to have to pay up to half of our earnings, but we demanded that the rate be lowered to thirty percent, and it was done! At first they tried to threaten us, but we pointed out to them what a silly thing they were doing—if they crushed our village, why they wouldn’t get a single copper out of us, after all! We kept up the pressure, never relenting, and eventually our lord had no choice but to give in to our demands. The best way to do that is…”

  The man prattled on and on, but the girl, her father, and her brothers only stared at him, expressionless.

  “Hm?”

  The man abruptly stopped his story, feeling the atmosphere growing tense.

  “It’s youuuuuuuuu!!!!” the family all suddenly roared.

  “Eeek!” the man exclaimed, cringing in terror.

  “We’ve heard about you! You’re the miscreant trying to incite a rebellion among the villagers! You’ll be hung for this!”

  “No, please, Father, wait! You mustn’t!”

  The man looked at the little girl expectantly as she tried, desperately, to hold her father back.

  “You mustn’t hang him until we’ve tortured him and gotten him to spill everything! Well, I mean I guess we’ll never know if he’s told us everything, but at the very least, we can keep torturing him until he’s dead…”

  “Gaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  ***

  “So, did he talk?”

  “Yeah. He’s n
ot a real soldier or anything, just some hired thug. No matter what we tried to beat out of him, all he’d say was, ‘I don’t know anyone like that! Are you planning on pinning me with some trumped up, false charges?’ and that was that.”

  “Of course…”

  After it was all over, the girl and the man conversed—not the little girl and her father, but Mile and the squad commander. Suddenly, a recollection of the imperial soldiers who were trying to disrupt trade routes floated through the back of her mind.

  “By the by,” said the commander, “Might I ask you something?”

  “Certainly. What is it?”

  A bit hesitantly he asked, “Do you…really have to wear that mask?”

  “Well, obviously! I am the defender of the superior, the unidentified superheroine, Superior Mask, after all!” Mile declared, puffing out her chest.

  “Well, but I mean, you did have it off until just a little while ago…” Mile shot the commander a glare, and he quickly backed off. “Er, never mind!”

  Eventually, the man did admit that he had been hired by the Empire, but there was no way of telling if that was fact or not. Was he telling the truth? Or was he merely spewing lies because his life was on the line? Or perhaps, was that what his employer had told him to say?

  At this rate, his information was no good to anyone, but at least this time, they had warded off a crisis and taken the countermeasures to prevent a repeat of the last time. The king would likely be told of this incident at once, and the lord himself would have a place of honor in having helped to prevent a national disaster. So, at the very least, Mile’s intervention was not for naught.

  Thanks to the eloquent persuasion of the commander, Mile received an audience with the lord and twenty gold pieces as a reward. Had things gone down the wrong path, the matter could have become incredibly serious, so compared to what a crisis would cost, twenty gold was nothing.

  Blessedly, the lord said not a word about the mask upon Mile’s face, speaking to her as though it were not even there.

  He truly was a good person.

  And so, as a bonus, Mile provided him with a number of ways by which he might deal with such incidents in the future.