Chapter 508 - Felian Northdale, Looking For a Place to Stay (End of Book 7) (Patreon)

Back and forth, back and forth.

With monotonous regularity, the brush scrubbed across the wooden planks of the ship's interior. Although the surface would soon be clean of all filth, a single, large wave would be enough to flood the port holes, which would render all previous work useless. It really was nothing more than busywork.

What a dull exercise.

His most recent task aboard this ship reminded Felian of the sword training in his youth, a mechanical repetition of simple motion, again and again, until someone told him to stop. Back then, just like now, he also hadn't understood the point of the exercises, and back then, just like now, he had also dutifully completed them. Though of course, those days of his youth were now long behind him.

"Hey, Pheya. You've done the same spot for a while. Be careful the bosun don't catch you." someone reminded Felian.

"Thank you," he responded, and returned a thankful smile on reflex. Behind him stood Kusi, a fellow sufferer aboard this ship, and a fellow traveler, at least until they reached the goal of their journey. Though of course, Felian didn't have the luxury to focus on the end of their journey. His main priority at the moment was to avoid a flogging, so he quickly adjusted his brush and continued his work in a different spot. However, his fellow traveler seemed less concerned with a flogging in their immediate future, and more with a scam in their distant one.

"Hey, do you really think the turtles will hand us our own land when we get there?"

"You keep asking that," Felian said, a dry remark which made Kusi visibly uncomfortable.

"I know, but I just can't help it. We did so much to get there. It can't be for nothing. You know everything, right? Why can't you know this, too?" Kusi argued.

His over-reliance reminded Felian of his old subordinates, a memory he would much rather forget. He didn't plan to serve a great master in the future, and he certainly didn't plan to take command over more helpless people who leaned on him for everything. Thus, he ignored the question and quietly got back to scrubbing. However, Kusi just wouldn't let go.

"So what is it? Do you think they'll give us land?"

"At this point, I'll be happy so long as we make it off this damned boat," Felian finally replied.

"Ain't that the truth," the verduic farmer said, before he finally returned to his own work in silence.

Relieved that the quiet rolling of the waves outside was once more only interrupted by the sound of his own work, Felian pushed his scrub forward with vigor. Eager to create extra space between himself and his fellow landsman, he ran before the farmer could find a new topic of conversation.

Still, his words weren't entirely spoken to silence his fellow scrubber. Rather, he really wasn't that attached to the idea of farming, and didn't care much if they got the land or not. In fact, any kind of calm and stable life would be just fine by him, no matter where it was. Arcavus knew that such a life was hard enough to find in these chaotic times. Though unlike his God, Felian had to learn such truth the hard way.

Back when he had left his post in Borna's expeditionary army, he had also given up his position as one of Duke Herak's knights. By that point, he had been fighting — and putting out fires — without pause for several years already. When he had set off from Iskay Island with his lonely boat, he had only wanted to find a quiet place on some lonely island, where he could calmly spend his days.

However, he soon realized that his snap decision had been too rash, and his goal too naive. For one, the Verdant Isles were still at war, even if he had abandoned his role in it. He couldn't just settle down on some random island if he had to fear an invasion from pirates or soldiers at any moment.

More importantly however, he couldn't settle down anywhere without an identity. At first, he had planned to live by himself, in the wilderness. At least those had been his thoughts when he deserted his army, as anything seemed better than his life at the time. Yet as soon as he calmed down, he remembered the jungles of the Verdant Isles, the hot, sticky weather, the endless water from all sides, the mosquitoes, bugs and snakes. Once reminded of the very reasons his life had been so miserable these years, he suddenly felt like living in such an environment wasn't a good retirement plan.

Instead, he aimed to find some small community to retire, maybe a rural village somewhere. Though this exactly was where his lack of identity became a problem. He couldn't just show up in some village and become one of the locals. The local kingdoms were stricter, more hierarchical societies than even those in Arcavia. They would never let some unknown man of dubious background join them, even less so a foreigner.

Though luckily, the troubled times provided him with a solution. In times of war, there were always displaced people, for better or for worse. All he had to do then was assume a new identity and join the stream of refugees. Of course, he couldn't do so as an Arcavian.

Luckily, his skin had already darkened from years of fighting in the tropical heat, and he had also learned the local language — at least somewhat — to communicate with their local allies. Thus, he simply grew out his beard to hide his facial features and pretended to be the only survivor from a tiny, isolated island which had been raided by pirates. It would explain his accent, as well as his lack of understanding about the local customs to some degree.

It took considerable effort and many detours, but in the end, Felian Northdale — under the new name of Pheya — managed to board a small vessel full of refugees in return for his sword and his family's bronze seal. After giving up all possessions from his old life, the boat finally led him to the city of Jurau on Rasacopa.

At last, he had arrived in a large city, and with a new identity as a local to boot. However, he had never entertained any intention of staying there. Just like the island of Iskay he had fled, Rasacopa was also mostly jungle. He had suffered enough under the heat of these damn islands for the rest of his life. So instead, he chose to move on, rather than settle down. Not to mention, now that he was one of the Verdant Folk, a fantastic offer was available to him, tough one which required a second trip across the ocean.

For some reason, the king of southern Medala, the merchant who got Felian into this mess in the first place, was offering free land to anyone who was willing to relocate from Rasacopa to the merchant's kingdom. Although it sounded like a scam to Felian — who knew that everything in life had a price — he did some further snooping and finally determined the offer to be genuine, at least according to the locals. Throughout his research, he had kept himself alive with daily odd jobs, earning his bread in the heat of the jungle by the sweat of his brow. By that point, he was more than ready to leave and never return.

Thus, he found a small group of farmers who had the same goal as him and mixed in with them, blending into the crowd to make his way back east. Although in their attempts to find a ship, they were rejected many times by many different crews — and only barely escaped a brawl in one of Jurau's most infamous taverns — they finally managed to find a ship willing to use them as free labor in return for passage. While the work was monotonous and hard, Felian would put up with anything, so long as the temperatures continued to drop along their course. Not to mention, at the end of the hard work, he would get exactly what he had wanted all this time.

After getting off the ship, he would officially be considered a former citizen of the Verdant Isles, who was now settling in Medala, a place where no one could confirm nor deny his fake identity. At that point, whether or not he took the land didn't even matter anymore. WIth a new identity, the world would open up for him, and he could finally plan the next phase of his life in peace.

"You hear me, boy!?"

A scream right next to Felian's ear broke him from his thoughts. When he looked over, he saw the bosun stare at him, his favorite flogging rod gripped tightly.

"Sorry, boss. I'll clean better," he said on reflex, and sped up the pace of his brush. However, the bosun ripped the brush right out of his hands instead.

"No, I'm saying we're about to land in Saniya. You're done. Get off my ship before I change my mind and beat you some more."

After another few seconds of confusion, Felian looked over to Kusi, who returned a nod and a look full of happiness. Finally, they had made it.

"Thank you, sire," an overjoyed Felian shouted. He didn't even notice the bosun's confusion at the strange way of address. Rather than worry about those he would never meet again, he ran over to one of the ship's gunports. From within the dingy lower deck of the ship, he spied through the tiny opening to get his first proper look at Saniya, the mystical city his master Herak had tried and failed to conquer for so long. Finally, he was here. One way or another, this was where he would restart his life.

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When Felian first set foot inside Saniya, he liked the place straight away. The city was huge, no smaller than the greatest cities of Arcavia. Even more, it was clean, and vibrant. To the well-traveled knight, it looked like a place full of opportunities. Though before he could take advantage of any of them, Felian and the other farmers were sent to an official looking building full of official looking people, where they would receive the land they had been promised.

However, when they were presented with their new land deeds, Felian immediately realized that something was wrong. His fellow farmers were eager to accept the offer as soon as it was presented to them, all of them just happy to receive any land for free. Yet unlike them, Felian had studied the maps of southern Medala in the past. He knew that the land they were handed was in the deepest south-east of the king's lands. It was a land of ice and snow, with many hills and little fresh water. All in all, it was of dubious worth. If he remembered correctly, this was the absolutely worst farmland the king's officials could offer to them.

With a vain hope in his heart, Felian asked if they could not receive any other land, but the official only said that the extra effort was not worth his while, unless they wanted to 'support his efforts'. Apparently, the officials here were abusing their power to decide the land distribution based on the bribes they received.

Though Felian was willing to pay a bit more for good land — especially since he was about to get it for free — he had given away the last of his possessions just to get here. Neither he, nor any of the other destitute farmers had the means to bribe their way into better property. In the end, the others still accepted the poor offer, despite their misgivings. Without any practical skills besides farming and worried for their futures, they didn't have another choice. Felian, meanwhile, felt swindled and unhappy — and more confident in his abilities to survive anywhere. Thus, he left the office without any land to his name.

As far as he was concerned, staying in Saniya was much better than a plot of farmland on a glacier anyways. If nothing else, there was plenty of work here, and plenty of directions to go in. In a place so full of opportunity, Felian had a hard time deciding what he wanted to do. This was where he planned to stay, at least for a while, as he tried to determine where his future would lead him.

Yet soon, he realized that his vision for the future had once again been too rosy. As he worked more odd-jobs and began to gather information again — this time in an attempt to find more permanent work — he soon discovered how bizarrely hostile Saniya was towards outsiders. This was doubly strange since most of the locals had moved here not long ago themselves. However, all of these first-generation immigrants had more than one reason to exclude outsiders.

For one, many of them — the ones who called themselves locals — had been here since before the lightning miracle. On the day of the miracle, many of them organized or spontaneously joined in the rebellion which killed a grand noble of Medala and started the lightning war. Since then, the local population was particularly close-knit, but was also more wary towards newcomers. That had become doubly true since the end of the war, when the city had been troubled by an influx of poor refugees from the defeated noble houses for a while.

Ever since then, these two groups, locals and newcomers, were suspicious of each other, and of anyone else who wanted to join this great, big city. Though the war was not the only reason for the local distrust of foreigners.

Apparently, there had also been a lot of spying incidents throughout Saniya's short history, which resulted in a general atmosphere of suspicion towards unknown faces. That counted especially for Felian, who was considered Verdant Folk, many of whom were still fighting Saniya's army in the western sea. To be frank, most of the spies — and even assassins — had been sent by Borna and its allies, so the bornish knight felt he had no right to complain about his exclusion.

On top of that, Felian also didn't have a registered entry of identity at the local archive, something all the locals had. Had he accepted the land back then, he would have been added upon arrival on his new farm. Now however, he once again lacked the identity he craved so much.

Without such an entry, he couldn't find any permanent employment, nor could he join one of the new work cooperatives. Worst, he could not visit many important places in the city either, many of which were important for gathering information. The newly opened public library attached to the university, or the public schools, for example, were great places of knowledge, which every citizen could visit for free. Meanwhile, unregistered aliens like himself could only take advantage of the city's extensive police system.

After his third visit to the police station to prove his innocence over some 'anonymous tip' from a local, Felian finally realized that he wouldn't find peace in this city, no matter how great it was. However, just as he was starting to feel desperate, rudderless and without a goal, a new way out presented itself once more, as if by divine providence. Bizarrely, this way out led him almost back to his starting point, back to the edge of the central kingdom.

Apart from the king's offer of land for immigrants, several other southern nobles were also trying to attract farmers. Apparently, many local peasants had fled their lands during the last war, and these lords now needed replacements to work their fields. In most cases, their offer was little more than a contract of slavery, offered only to the poorest and most desperate in the city. However, Lord Makipura's offer, in particular, was different, for various reasons.

First off, this Lord Makipura was the country's minister of agriculture, responsible for all the farming in the kingdom. Thus, he needed to show initiative on the implementation of the country's new agricultural innovations. As a result, many methods on farming organization from the king's lands were directly adopted in Makipura's territory.

Not only that, the lord's estate of Tacicir was also the only region of the southern kingdom which lay north of the Narrows. Not only was the northern culture different from that in the south, which made the territory less attractive for southern settlers. It was also the only southern kingdom territory to share direct borders with the central kingdom, an enemy nation. Many would be worried that another war could break out soon, and that their new lands would become a front line. Thus hemmed in by circumstance, in order to attract any new farmers at all, Makipura's offer was very generous, no worse than the king's. Not only could newcomers receive free land without the need to become the king's servant, they would even be granted one of the elusive identity entries upon arrival.

Even so, most locals weren't eager to take the offer, and chose to stay away from a potential battlefield. Instead, they preferred to move to the Verdant Isles in search of free land.

However, the offer attracted Felian, and the reluctance of the locals suited him just fine. Unlike the rabble, he knew about the state of the central kingdom. The land had been wrought with internal struggles even before the last war, which had further depleted its might. Felian knew that they were in no condition to start another war anytime soon. Even if they did, without support from Arcavia, the central kingdom was hardly a threat, stuck in a poor strategic position and faced with the powerful southern armies.

Thus, he wouldn't have to worry about foreign armies trampling his crops. All he had to content with on the border would be some bandits or wild animals, at worst. Yet Felian himself was still a knight. Even without a sword, what he feared the least were rabble and beasts. Not to mention, the temperate northern climate would suit him much better, for it reminded him of his distant home.

Thus, without any further hesitation, Felian once more embarked upon a long journey, this time to the north-east across the entire length of Sachay. At this journey's end, he would finally find a place to call his own, a place where he could forget about the violence of the world, or so he hoped.

Hermit's Notes: A repost of sorts. I finally figured out where to put this chapter. I think it works fine as an epilogue of Book 7, even though it screws up the structure of the book a little. However, the originally planned epilogue (another one of Corco's meetings) thematically didn't fit with the book at all, and works much better as a prologue for Book 8, which is why I arranged it that way.

I'll keep the extra chapter version of this up for a bit longer since just deleting it seems too abrupt. Will delete it once this one becomes available for the 5$ tier (the lowest tier which could read this as a bonus).

Oh, also, I'm a bit late with my uploads again, because starting a new book always takes a bit of extra sorting and research. Sorry about that.