It was already late September. The summer heat had gradually begun to fade, and even the gentle breeze carried a hint of coolness.
The once deep-green leaves on the roadside trees had begun to take on streaks of bright yellow. When the wind blew, a leaf or two would occasionally drift down.
Yet despite the cool autumn weather, Freeman was drenched in sweat. His short tunic was soaked through and clung uncomfortably to his skin.
There was little he could do about it. Anyone hauling more than two hundred jin of wheat from Ireland Village to Bunta City, traveling nearly thirty kilometers without a break, would probably have sweated just as much.
Actually, he had not needed to put himself through all this. Starting on the day of the autumn harvest, the Maddy Merchant Guild, which specialized in the grain trade in Bunta City, had sent buyers to the village. Most farming households had sold almost all their harvested wheat to them.
Freeman had done the same in previous years, but this year he had chosen to transport his harvested wheat to Bunta City himself.
The reason was simple. This year, he had happened to learn that selling directly to buyers in Ireland Village would fetch thirty-four fewer copper coins per jin than selling in Bunta City.
For more than two hundred jin of wheat, that meant losing nearly seventy or eighty silver coins.
Perhaps the nobles in Bunta City would not even bother looking twice at seventy or eighty silver coins lying on the ground. Even most of the villagers in Ireland Village did not care too much about that amount, so nearly all of them had chosen to sell their wheat directly to the Maddy Merchant Guild in the village.
But for a poor man like Freeman, with