The Rescuing Sapling (1)
"The Village Chief says he'll join too."
Good to hear.
When I put out the call for a slave rescue task force, the volunteers came flooding in. The village's population stood at roughly a thousand, and about three hundred of them had signed up — which meant, in effect, every villager who was physically able to go and fight had volunteered.
Beyond the elves whose family and kin were tied up in this relocation, a surprising number had joined purely for the chance to smash a slave market. The laws and institutions of the realm had always stood in their way, letting them do no more than dream of it — but the moment word spread that a Count's patronage might actually make it happen, all that old resentment against humans came boiling to the surface.
To get this kind of response the moment an opportunity appeared... they must be carrying some seriously deep grudges.
Then again, it took that kind of grudge in the first place for anyone to deliberately migrate out to a frontier village this remote, where even stubbornness could barely carry you.
But this was a rescue, not a massacre. Anyone who couldn't keep those feelings in check was of no use to me, so most of them were filtered out and only an elite core was selected.
"Congratulations, gentlemen of the Thief Trio. The Tree has looked favorably upon your talent for picking locks and robbing other people's homes, and so you have been granted the honor of joining this feast of blood and carnage."
"Is that... supposed to be a compliment?!"
Raw strength mattered, of course, but survival skills mattered more. Since every elf could already shoot a bow well enough, selection focused on their other abilities instead.
Former professional thieves — men who could quite literally steal slaves — were premium hires. Infiltrating a slave pen to free the captives inside demanded exactly that skill set. And since they themselves wanted to come, there was no reason to refuse.
There were some rather special recruits as well.
From the far side of the thicket clearing came the Water Drop Girl, wearing a horned helmet and riding the familiar rabbit — a rabbit that was, true to form, bounding along in great leaps. As she drew near, she raised a mana blade overhead like a knight of old.
Whoa, it's the Water Drop Knight on her rabbit steed. How majestic.
For all her splendor, though, something bothered me: the rabbit, with its ears seized like handlebars in her grasp, was squeaking away in miserable protest.
Did you clear this with the rabbit?
The Water Drop Girl nodded brightly. The rabbit gave a long, mournful piiyyyoooook.
You can fly anyway, so you hardly need to be a rabbit knight, do you?
The Water Drop Girl shook her head with iron resolve. A picture drawn in flowing water appeared: a warhorse kicking a man to the ground in victory. Then a rabbit dropped into the horse's place in the image, and the drawing became a rabbit seizing a man instead.
Right, the rabbit really is absurdly strong. And it's been gorging on mana stones all this while, too.
Figuring out their disguises was going to be a headache, but this was a tremendously reassuring addition to the roster.
"The Village Chief says we should take thirty, not twenty."
Isn't that too many to sneak into the city all at once?
"He says about half should wait outside the city to cover the retreat after the rescue. The ratio isn't exactly efficient, but we don't really need to worry about efficiency anyway."
I see. Then let's do as the Chief says — bulk up the reserves and support squads so we can make a clean getaway when the time comes.
"A small elite force" was stretching it a little now.
Once the roster was filled, training and instruction began at once.
"I know full well that some of you are dying to ask why we aren't marching out this instant instead of sitting here preparing. And some of you, watching me step up front, are probably thinking: that poor man, he's the one who got picked."
Teacher Paelian stood before the assembled task force and spoke.
"But moments like these are precisely when you must keep a cool head. I understand your fear — that while we train, the people we mean to save will be sold off and shipped somewhere we can never find them. Rest assured, such a foolish thing almost never happens."
He drew out a thick stack of documents.
"This is the official revitalization plan for that slave market. Read it, and you'll find the city pledging to place a certain specialty commodity — the elven race — under special management. Special management includes legalizing illegal slaves, and that is not an administrative process that can be wrapped up in a month or two. You all have far more preparation time than you feared."
The City Bureaucrat had set this whole scheme in motion with a cold-blooded plan: flood the market with a massive supply of elves, revitalize the slave trade, and grow the city on the proceeds. Which, ironically, made it wonderfully easy for us to prepare and strike.
Village Chief Eldrin took over from there.
"But there isn't enough time for proper training, so we begin immediately, starting today. First, to loosen everyone up — one hundred laps around the village."
"Er... pardon?"
"GO!"
While Village Chief Eldrin, put in charge of training, sent the task force off to a short, brutal tour of hell, Teacher and Thermia were dispatched to the Lord's Castle. There was no need to rely on force alone in the face of illegality, after all.
Two horses galloped down the road between the trees.
"Agh! Ugh! Agh!"
Thermia groaned, clutching at the ache between her legs. "Is there seriously no way to ride these things without it hurting?!"
"Nope. Just endure it."
Teacher settled the matter with refreshing bluntness.
Really? There's nothing?
"Unfortunately not. There are tricks — keeping your thighs tensed, that sort of thing — but gritting your teeth and bearing it is your best option."
"Unbelievable."
A shame, that.
I briefly considered converting the mystery of gaseous mana into pain relief, but since she'd have to acclimate eventually, I didn't bother. Besides, the whole point of bringing Thermia along to the Lord's Castle was to let her build experience.
Thanks to horses that drank gaseous mana and ran without tiring, we reached the castle in no time — made easier still by the clean, well-kept road linking it to the cities. A castle of slightly-less-than-grand proportions emerged between the hills, far too drab to be the seat where a prince had been staying.
Our territory really is the middle of nowhere, huh.
"We have an earlier guest."
Teacher handed his horse over to the stable hand and stared at the carriage. "A bureaucrat's carriage..."
Oh?
I took a discreet look inside. Just as Teacher suspected, it was indeed the carriage of a visiting official — and buried under work, apparently, because city paperwork sat neatly stacked inside even mid-journey. Among it, documents concerning the slave market caught my eye.
Well, well?
On closer reading, half of them were complaints filed by the slave traders. Petitions abounded: You promised us a supply of elf slaves, yet results are falling below quota — is the slave market revival actually being pushed forward? How are we supposed to trust you at this rate?
So our raiders rescuing the elf village and unraveling his grand plan had come back around as a political blow to the bureaucrat who'd been championing it.
Looks like our rival got here first.
"Huh? Really?! Then aren't we in trouble?"
As we were shown into the reception room, Teacher deliberated carefully. "That depends on the circumstances. If the Steward summoned him, that's moderately good news. If the man came of his own accord, it's not quite so good."
In our territory, the Steward — the man who had stayed behind rather than march on the capital during the rebellion — governed as acting lord. The second son who held the fief had become king, so someday the land might be absorbed into the royal domain with an administrator dispatched from the capital, but for now, the Steward remained in charge.
Where does the Steward stand on slavery?
"On the abolitionist side."
Ohh, good news.
"But it's not nearly that simple a matter."
Stepping into the reception room, Teacher took a seat on the sofa. After lecturing Thermia — who was gawking around in open wonder — on proper etiquette for a formal reception, he gazed absently into the air as if dredging up old memories.
"Our position has always been the abolition of slavery. That's why I joined the second prince's cause in the first place."
Well, it would take something that drastic to install a commoner elf beside the Crown Prince and raise him all the way to high office.
"Many nobles at the heart of court politics favor abolition. In an overcrowded capital, hiring labor is cheaper and easier than keeping slaves — and recent scholarship argues vigorously that freeing slaves into commoners would expand the propertied population and enrich the nation."
"Then it'll be abolished? For us, I mean? Surely not."
Thermia sounded doubtful.
"Not a chance. Outside the capital's orbit, people are scarce, and in the provinces keeping slaves is what's cheap and easy. That's why so many regional lords hold plenty of them. They hold less power than the capital's nobles, but slaves are soldiers in waiting — you ignore them at your peril."
Teacher's eyes settled on my branch. "Our second prince's faction was originally abolitionist, but after the dull-witted late king's jealousy drove us out to this fief, the situation grew tangled. To march on the capital from here, we need the support and backing of the regional lords — and we can't afford to clash with them over slavery."
Ohh... how did everything get so knotted?
"The Steward is open-minded enough to have built a genuine rapport with me, but he's no fool blind to reality. If he summoned the man in charge, it's most likely just to keep any irregular procedures from going too far."
Teacher sighed. "Our purpose in coming here was always modest: let the Steward know we have our suspicions, and ask him to apply pressure so the city keeps one eye on the Lord's Castle. Anything more, he can hardly do — unless the bureaucrats are stupid enough to hand him a pretext."
That seems about right.
Shifting my gaze out of our reception room and through a wall or two, I could see the Steward and the bureaucrat mid-conversation.
"You misunderstand me."
The bureaucrat offered his explanation with practiced ease. "Slave traders who spend every other day competing with one another forming a sudden alliance to raid a village — no one could have foreseen it. And yes, I take full responsibility for scheduling the city garrison's training when I did."
Does that sound like someone taking full responsibility to you? He's twisting it into how could anyone have predicted that?
Could he be a bureaucrat planted by the pro-slavery regional nobles?
The second prince had been adjusting his policy positions, after all — he may well have taken the nobles' recommended candidates on as city officials and put them to active use. For a mere acting steward, that made the man an extremely tricky target to touch without cause.
"And yet I am accused of conspiring. Quite the contrary — I am in awe of His Majesty's wise judgment. So many officials questioned the value of aiding an elf village in a border forest, and who could have guessed that very village would send its own guard to fill the gap left by the city garrison?"
The bureaucrat put on an expression of deep admiration. "All of this is thanks to His Majesty's surpassing wisdom."
The Steward looked distinctly sour. "In other words, you had nothing to do with this incident."
"I cannot imagine which ignorant soul would suggest otherwise, but it is a slander beneath response. Dragging a busy man back and forth on nothing but accusation, without a shred of evidence — that man should be the one answering for it."
Just as Teacher predicted, the Steward intended nothing more than pressure. He made his displeasure plain on his face, but he never actually pressed the bureaucrat for answers.
"Look at me."
The bureaucrat struck his chest proudly. "The Sun God has visited no divine punishment upon me, and my health remains sound. Is that not proof of my innocence? There exists no cleaner evidence of innocence in all the world."
Is that how it works?
The man was so insufferable that I sent a surge of gaseous mana up into the ceiling. Pressing hard, I cracked apart a section of the luxurious plasterwork. A shard of stone plunged down with a whistling drop.
"Well then, I shall take my leave — hurk!"
The bureaucrat took the blow square on the crown of his head. "Ngh... what in the world—"
Not divine punishment, but it's a gift from me.
The Steward, caught off guard, let out a small snort. "Not in the best of health, are you...?"
There it is — the 'he had it coming' look.
"Since you declared it yourself, we really ought to send up a word of thanks. If the gods have sent us an omen, surely ignoring it and inviting true divine punishment would be the greater sin."
The bureaucrat found himself at a complete loss for words.
Yu-hu. Consider that some well-earned karma.