“Uhh, so, Al,” I said. “Squires are often asked to cover for their own expenses, but I will be providing your equipment and also paying you a wage.”
“A-Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“It’s not a question of minding. I can’t go taking money from the dwarves who moved here right now. They’d see me as a heartless monster.” Many of them still didn’t even have a reliable way of supporting themselves. There was no way I could take money from them. “So let’s talk about how much to pay you.”
“Huh? Uhm… If I can serve you, that’s… enough for…”
“No.”
“O-Okay.”
“One thing that a certain person I know always told me is that money is important. Hmm, let’s see. Taking on a squire isn’t quite like hiring a servant, for example, but—”
“Right.”
“If I don’t pay you or you don’t accept payment, that can be taken as your work, your ‘sincerity,’ not having any value.”
He didn’t reply.
“It might not be very classy to put a price on everything, but it’s what everyone looks at, so I want to make sure I don’t cut any corners where money is concerned.” I spoke with finality, thinking that Gus would probably say the exact same thing.
“You’re so adult.”
“I’m just trying hard to grow up.”
We decided upon his pay and the other details of the arrangement. He would live in my mansion and work for me, and join in with my morning training.
After that, I started to think about what I’d teach him first, which caused me some hesitation.
“All right, once more around!”
Al followed behind me, panting as we ran laps of the city.
Now that I thought about it, I had never taken a pupil before and had no experience in teaching. I tried remembering what I’d been taught by Blood, but there were a lot of differences between me, who had begun learning as a child, and Al, who already had a grown body. In what way and in what order was I supposed to teach him things like how to fight and how to be a warrior, and how could I get them to stick?
Very soon after beginning to consider these things, I felt a renewed appreciation for Blood, Mary, and Gus. They had taught me their own skills as if there was nothing to it, but now I wondered how much planning had gone on behind the scenes to get me to absorb so many things so efficiently. Which should be taught first, footwork or stance? Standing here in the shoes of a teacher, I realized that even seemingly insignificant decisions like these had logic and planning behind them.
“Almost there! Push yourself!” I ran just ahead of him to encourage him. He was sprinting his heart out and almost collapsing from exhaustion, but he was still fighting to keep up.
Teaching was making me realize just how far I still was from the place my parents had reached. But one day, I was sure, I’d catch up to them.
“Good work! Walk around for a bit to get your breath back, and we’ll move on to muscle training!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“In a battle, muscular strength is the foundation upon which everything else rests. In the words of my mentor, ‘Get ripped, and you can solve pretty much everything by force!’”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
So I could stand shoulder to shoulder with those three, so I could tell them with a smile how far I’d come, and so I could do justice to the sincerity Al had offered me, I vowed to do my utmost.
Now then. It bears repeating that what that was expected from me was the military might to guarantee the region’s safety and for me to use my title of paladin to stand in front of His Excellency and represent the area. So I was providing my squire Al with a warrior’s education as well, hoping first of all for him to become physically strong. The woodlands around here were dangerous, and I regularly set foot in the most perilous parts of them and fought against innumerable dangers. If he couldn’t protect himself, he would be useless.
Al aside, however, you might ask if I wasn’t doing anything remotely resembling the activities of a feudal lord, which is a separate question worth answering.
There was a little bit of a gathering that day.
Because of the Fertile Kingdom’s Southmark expansion policy, people from many areas of the northern continent of Grassland were coming to settle here.
For example, the cook in that mutton place in Whitesails was from Arid Climate in the northeast. Reystov, I suspected based on his external characteristics and his imposing yet quiet bearing, was probably born somewhere even further north on the northern continent, probably around the Ice Mountains. Ethel and Bishop Bagley, of course, had come from the original Fertile Kingdom and specifically its capital, Ilia’s Tear.
Many others came from the Allied Kingdoms, a federation of small- and medium-sized kingdoms to the west of Fertile, or from the Hundred Warring Kingdoms in the southeast, which was still a conflict zone where warlords fought for power. Still more came from the islands dotted around Middle-sea, from large forests all over that were home to the elves, from the dwarven mountains, and from even farther away than that. There were also wanderers like Bee the troubadour, who had no singular home at all to speak of and traveled from place to place.
Torch Port really was home to all kinds of people, and they tended to live in concentrated areas with others from the same country or cultural sphere, so every street and section of the city had its own personality.
On the other hand, the fact that each individual part had its own personality was also a source of conflict. Gestures carried different meanings in different cultures, certain expressions could be taken as serious insults, disagreements could arise in contracts and payments as a result of the two sides having different business customs. And in some cases, things couldn’t even get that far because the groups couldn’t understand each other’s language to begin with.
So yes, there was trouble, and all kinds of it. Early on had been the worst.
There was even one time when an argument became magnified, people standing up for one side led to more standing up for the other, and the situation escalated into almost becoming a battle between multiple groups in the middle of town, their families and friends behind them. Menel, Reystov, and I settled things down by force before they got serious, but it just served to underline how scary differences in culture really were.
If you let these kinds of things go, the turmoil would only get worse, so after consulting with the priests, I also created a variety of rules and penalties that would apply only within the city. I established rules to observe when selling, rules to observe when using the boats and port, and a rule for when problems arose; that one said to make your case with logic and reason to the feudal lord or one of the priests who worked for him and await instructions. They also laid out what kind of punishment you would receive if you ignored this process and started a disturbance or joined in with one and escalated it, among other things.
The experience made me realize that the ancient laws of my past world that placed equal culpability on both parties in the case of a fight had been made for a good reason. It also made me think of the struggles faced by Ethel, who ruled over the larger city of Whitesails, and Bishop Bagley, who ran the main temple there.
In any case, in addition to the firm-handed approach of rules and punishments, some softer touches were also required. One of these was to set up regular gatherings where representatives of each group would meet and talk. I had been trying to show up as much as possible, and that day, I left Al’s training to Menel so I could take part. I heard all kinds of different opinions and noted them down. We talked from late morning until the afternoon, with a break for lunch in the middle.