The ex-mercenary tilted his head. "I did say to him that you were a guard, although a new one - which you are."

"Yeah, but when he said that he would leave me here with you, he didn't seem to think that I was a guard at all! He thought that you were just pretending that I was a guard!"

Feroy exhaled. "Look around us, Hyola. We are not in Tiranat. What do you think would have happened if I kept insisting that you were a guard? At the very best he might have asked you to prove it by having a sword fighting duel with one of his guards, which you had no chance of winning. Even if you didn't get heavily injured in that, it would only have proved to him that you are not a guard, since we don't want anyone here to know about our crossbows, and that's where you specialize."

"Anyway, one thing you should learn from today is that you should never correct a noble's assumptions." He added, "Lord Kivamus is an exception, and he has told us many times to give him our true opinions, but if you are dealing with any other noble, no matter if you are right or wrong, you simply don't go and correct him, or it will be your hide on the line. If you are right and he is wrong, he will lose face in front of his people and will somehow find a way to punish you for making him look bad, and if you are wrong, then he could simply put you in jail for lying to a noble. This is even more important when we are acting as merchants."

Feroy shrugged, "That's why I didn't correct him even when he thought I was only a merchant passing through Tiranat. As long as he doesn't think that we are residents from Tiranat itself, he is more likely to keep buying our coal, otherwise there might be some more calculations going in his mind before deciding to trade with someone belonging from a neighbouring barony like Tiranat, which is a natural competitor of Kirnos just by its presence there."

"I didn't think about any of that..." Hyola muttered.

"Like I said, you are new, and you'll learn in time. For now we need to leave for the manor." Feroy glanced at all of them for a moment before frowning. "Where the heck is Yufim?"

Everyone looked around for him, before Hyola pointed to a clothing shop nearby, just inside a small alley exiting the market place. "There, he is talking to a local woman."

Feroy exhaled loudly. "Bring him here right now!"

"That moron... I told him to stay close to everyone!" Tesyb muttered, before jogging towards the blonde archer.

Hyola looked where Yufim was standing, and saw that the woman he was talking to seemed to be crying. What was wrong with this idiot? How could he make a woman cry within moments of meeting her?

Soon Tesyb had dragged the archer towards them.

Feroy frowned at him. "Can't you follow even simple orders? I told you to stay together with others!"

"I didn't even want to go!" Yufim protested, "but I saw that she was crying... So I had to go and ask her what's wrong!" The archer grinned. "I think you'll be interested in the news I found out."

"We'll see," Feroy muttered. "What did you learn?"

"The woman... she was married until recently," the archer explained, "she still is, actually. But a couple of months ago, her husband sold himself into slavery so he could pay off the debt he had taken to feed his family and buy that clothing shop from the baron, who obviously owns everything here."

"At least the guy had the guts to sell himself into slavery instead of selling his wife or children," Feroy commented. "Still, as sad as it is, this is quite a common occurrence everywhere. Let's go."

"Wait, wait!" Yufim held up a hand. "Hear me out first. The husband of the woman sold himself to someone who owns a big clay mine up in the north - a clay mine which is owned by someone named Torhan."

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"Wait, what? That bastard Torhan actually owns the clay mine?" Feroy rubbed his small beard. "I thought he'd just be a bandit doing the dirty tasks of someone, like Nokozal was running the limestone quarry owned by Baron Zoricus."

"No, no," the archer shook his head. "I didn't find out much else, because the woman herself doesn't know that much, but according to her, it's well-known that Torhan is a landowner, and owns those clay mines. I thought you'd have found out about it when you went to talk to the locals earlier..."

"Hmm..." Feroy muttered. "No, nobody took his name. I think the locals are way too scared of him." He thought out loud, "But... they shouldn't be that scared of a bandit living that far away when they are staying safe inside a walled village... Hmm... that means this Torhan guy is well connected to the baron... Earlier I thought that the local baron only tolerated the presence of this bandit so Kirnos could keep getting clay, which they can make into pottery and sell to the visiting ships to earn gold, but it seems like their relationship goes deeper than that. I'd ask around more, but I don't think we'll find out anything if people are that scared of him."

The ex-mercenary looked around for a moment. "Well, that's a worry for later. I'll let Lord Kivamus know about it when we return to Tiranat. For now, let's leave for the baron's manor to sell the coal, and then we'll exit Kirnos from the eastern gate. We'll have to camp somewhere in the forests for tonight, then tomorrow morning we'll circle around to the north to meet the merchant who smokes fishes up there. Tesyb, you remember the way to the manor of Baron Farodas, right?"

Tesyb gave a nod.

"Good. Lead both of the wagons there. I'll join you at the manor once I have talked with this merchant and told him that we want to buy smoked fish from him outside these walls to avoid the taxes once again."

"What if we reach the manor before you return?" Hyola asked. "I don't think any of us can deal with the young master or the baron as well as you can."

"In that case just wait outside the gates for me. I'll try to be quick. Go now. It's already evening, and we don't have any time to waste if we want to find a good place to camp in the forests."

With that, the ex-mercenary started walking with fast steps towards the northern gate, where he said the smoked-fish merchant had a storage barn, while Tesyb joined Hyola in the front wagon, and they started moving on the cobblestone road going south towards the baron's manor.

*******

~ Kivamus ~

He was once again standing near the northern gate with some other people from the manor, while looking at the watchtower. It was evening right now, and today had been noticeably warmer than yesterday, so he felt that snow should start melting any day now. While that was good news in many ways, since they would be able to start sowing wheat and take the first step towards becoming self-sufficient in food, while merchants would also start coming and the manor would be able to start earning at least some revenue after that, it also meant that the threat of bandit attacks would become high once again. Soon, the guards might not even be able to continue hunting at the current rate by sending out four hunting groups, or they would be leaving the village basically defenceless due to a shortage of guards.

One good news was that out of the targeted twelve seed drills he had commissioned to be crafted by the carpenter, ten were already done, which meant it would only be a few more days before Darora could start working on the fourth crossbow. Hopefully they would be able to make a few more of them before any bandit raid happened. Of course it would be even better if no raid happened at all, but that was probably just wishful thinking on his part.

With the grain prices continuing to increase throughout the winter everywhere, as well as a general slowdown of economy because of everyone tightening their belts for the coming year - mainly because of a series of bad harvest in the past few years - it meant that many more people would have left their lives in the towns and cities, and would be roaming around the countryside or in the forests in search of easy money or food. That meant more and more bandits in the kingdom, especially in the southern parts of it where Tiranat was located.

Still, there probably wasn't any point in worrying about it. All he could do was to try his best to make sure everyone in the village was safe and protected.

Before long, while he was still lost in his thoughts, he suddenly noticed that the constant sound of hammering on the watchtower had stopped.

Finally! The moment for which he had been waiting for nearly an hour seemed to have arrived! Looking towards the top of the tower, he saw Taniok leaning over the parapet, and grinning at him.

"That was the very last nail, milord!" the old carpenter boasted. "The first watch tower is complete now! Come on up. You should take a look from the top."