"My lord, this is your residence."
Looking at the newly completed, peaked-roof wooden house, Darean nodded in satisfaction.
Insisting on comparing its living conditions to those of the Hightower would have been utterly unreasonable.
Getting the house built in such a short time was already very good.
At least it was immeasurably better than the leather tents that had already begun to swell in the rain.
Seeing their lord nod, the carpenters and masons standing around all breathed a sigh of relief.
If Darean had said, "What is this rubbish? Tear it down and build it again."
Those poor people could have done nothing but curse inwardly.
"Yes, very good. Just keep building them like this. Speed up work on the residents' homes, too."
Unfortunately, Darean had no suitable candidate for a civil administrator, so he could only worry about such matters himself.
His trip had only resolved the most pressing health problem, but the actual process of development was bound to present a whole host of problems.
He would take things one step at a time.
The house was not large, with only two floors.
The lord's room was on the second floor, while the first was generally used to store important resources, pass judgments when problems arose in the territory, or discuss important business.
He had barely made a couple of rounds through his new home when Maester Marwyn's voice rang out downstairs:
"Darean, are you up there?"
He walked downstairs, and sure enough, the gray-robed "new maester" was already standing at the door.
Darean noticed that the old man was carrying a wicker basket in his right hand, filled with a large pile of freshly gathered plants.
He had no idea what they were. That lay beyond his knowledge.
Before he could speak, the old man launched into a tirade:
"Over a hundred people, hardly any medical care or medicine, and not a single person who knows even a little about preparing medicines."
"What was that bastard Brandon Cuy thinking?"
"Wasn't he just planning to let all of you die in this mud?"
Darean knew everything the old man said was true.
He offered no explanation, pulling over a slatted crate as a stool so his maester could sit down first.
Spreading his hands, he said helplessly:
"I don't have any experience. Even with things as they are, Brandon Cuy never intended to give me enough craftsmen in the first place."
"I only managed to pry them out of him later."
"I became a lord without any training. Have you ever seen a direct descendant of House Hightower worse off than me?"
The old man was still huffing angrily, though he knew that the matter had little to do with Darean.
He sighed, looking out at the camp beyond the door, where civilization remained in an extremely primitive state.
Lifting the basket in his hand, he said quietly:
"It's a good thing I came. I just took a look around, and there are enough varieties of medicinal herbs growing wild."
"I can't cure fatal diseases like greyscale, but I can handle minor ailments like headaches and fevers."
Most maesters had a fair amount of skill in medicine.
Though their methods could sometimes be rather brutal.
"Give me a room, and someone quick and capable."
"I'll prepare some basic medicines first. Hopefully my things weren't shaken to pieces on the journey."
Darean had no objection and pointed to a room on the north side of the first floor.
"That one's yours. Will you choose an assistant yourself, or shall I?"
The old man waved a hand.
"I'll choose one myself. Anyone you pick might be all muscle, just like you."
"Hands that wield swords can't hold fragile glass tubes steadily. This isn't Oldtown. Replacing anything that breaks will be difficult."
Now that he had a maester, Darean no longer needed to worry about unexpectedly losing people to minor illnesses, barring serious injuries.
Next came the water supply.
It was not that his territory lacked water.
In fact, after Clyson led a party to survey the area, they found quite a few small streams within its borders.
The problem was that they were all some distance from the camp.
If a fire or some other emergency really broke out, distant water would be no help.
Darean could therefore only assign people to find a suitable place to sink a well.
But this was skilled work and could not be sorted out quickly.
Quite apart from anything else, reinforcing the walls of the well so they would not be drinking muddy water every day was a difficult problem in itself.
The camp's carpenters and masons had been run off their feet lately.
For now, a rationing system was in place and money was not in circulation. The way to motivate people was to give them an extra piece of meat or bread.
There were countless matters to attend to and many problems, but simply no way to solve them.
Darean knew that although he had spared Aemon Cuy's life at Oldtown's southern gate, that did not mean House Cuy would repay the favor.
He would count himself fortunate if they did not come looking for trouble. Getting support from them was out of the question!
"What a headache..."
Standing on the second-floor terrace, Darean gazed at the curtain of drizzling rain and sighed repeatedly.
There had been too much rain this year.
According to the residents responsible for tending the existing wheat fields.
The final wheat harvest of the year 297 in the Conquest Calendar would certainly be smaller.
Whether it could sustain the population was another question.
Without bread, who would still be willing to stay here?
The spell [Garth Greenhand's Gift] in the Book of Strange Script was available for use again.
The problem was that Darean's current reserves of magic were nowhere near enough for mass production.
He could squeeze himself dry for a while and take care of a small patch of land.
But expecting him to sustain the entire camp's food supply alone was still asking too much.
Perhaps Garth Greenhand himself had been a magic user who could sow crops with a wave of his hand, back in an age when magic had not yet faded.
After all, almost every noble family in the Reach had records of the man.
Even if those records contained a great deal of inaccuracy and fabrication by now, that did not mean they had come from nothing.
It had already been two full months since Darean received his fief.
During the first month, he had unlocked the first and second sections of the Book of Strange Script's prologue, "Green Lands."
He had obtained the two spells [Force of Sharpness] and [Garth Greenhand's Gift].
Yet throughout the following month, he had never found a way to unlock the third chapter.
Damn it, couldn't this thing give me a quest prompt?
Standing there, he could see through the hazy rain that a small village enclosed by earthen walls had already begun to take shape.
Giving it an official name was already on the agenda.
Once the roofs were finished on the last few residents' houses, everyone would hold a celebratory feast to mark the full completion of the first phase of construction.
As lord, Darean had already keenly recognized that the drawbacks of rationing without allowing money to circulate were gradually spreading.
Enthusiasm for work was rapidly declining. The initial fervor for building a new home was nowhere to be seen.
Apart from a very few outstanding workers who received extra rewards.
Everyone else received the same share.
As the baser side of human nature emerged, slacking off finally grew more and more rampant.
Clyson had been so angry that he had nearly drawn his sword on the men openly dragging their feet.
Thus, this system had fulfilled its purpose and reached its end.
It was time to allow trade within the territory.
The residents could no longer depend on the collective for their livelihoods. They would have to take responsibility for themselves.
Darean knew it was too early to take this step.
But with so little to his name, he no longer had a choice.
It was now the year 297 in the Conquest Calendar. Perhaps news from King's Landing would soon spread far and wide.
Though it would take some time before the effects reached him, he had to be ready before then.
Before you continue