3 – Shopping for Land

Easterners used horses too, or so I’d heard, so it was a damn shock to me when one of the guards brought out a bird that was about as tall as a horse that stood on two lanky, orange legs tipped with sharp talons. His plumage was dark blue and red wattles drooped under his beak.

Iudex Ryuga had chuckled at me wide eyed reaction. “They don’t have them where you come from, Westman? We call them cassowarys. Horses are better for war and such, but we use these birds mainly for couriers and quickly travelling about,” he’d said.

“He looks a touch temperamental,” I had replied.

“Indeed. Don’t stand behind him, he has a mean kick and startles easily.” And so we had set off.

It was a decently long journey, passing along a well-worn dirt road that led from Tiode, over hills of grass and beyond even the fields and rice paddies that bordered the settlement. It was so far that the hissing sighs of the sea grew silent, and the village only became visible from atop the peaks.

When we got there it was readily apparent that the old man hadn’t been lying to me. The fields were dull and lifeless, only weeds and patches of grass breaking through the soil, and the fields were littered with great rocks and old tree stums. He sat in the saddle, watching me with some measure of curiosity. He’d kept his cassowary at a light trot the whole way over and I had kept pace without fatigue or even falling behind him.

Maybe it was unwise to give a glimpse of any profane power, but I was not in the mood to put on an act and start huffing and puffing for breath.

I looked around, scanning the fields. A fence had been partially erected around the border of this land, but most of it had been lost to time. The same could be said for the old farm house at the heart of the place, where it would take time and work to mend the holes in the roof.

Ryuga ran a gloved hand through the flowing tails of his moustache. “It’s not much, like I said. The old fellow who bought the place was wealthy, but knew nothing of farming or ranching. The old soak gave up on it rather quickly and nobody has cared to take the place since.”

I nodded, folding my arms and continuing to examine the place. It wasn’t too different to the aristocratic toffs back home, before the war, who fancied themselves as frontiersmen. Most of them gave up when the realities of farming dawned on them, or they just paid someone else to do the hard work for them.

“This is about… ten acres, thereabouts?” I asked.

“Just about,” said the older man.

It was more than I’d had back home, where we’d been sharecropping from the local lord. But I had an abundance of money to my name now, more than I’d ever thought possible in my youth, and this was a decent price for the sheer volume of land.

Plus… I glanced over my shoulder to my pack. Among the things I had bought from my smuggling friend was a bottle of an alchemical solution brewed to nourish the soil. It was not going to magically make this place lush with life, but it would give some strength to the soil. Enough that I could start to grow things upon the land, if I treated it well and kept crop rotation in mind.

And with such space it would not be hard to erect a coop, raising extra coinage through the sale of eggs and chicks.

Yes… this land was rough, but not unusable. It just needed the hand of a man who wasn’t an ignorant fool. And if it took time to get the land up to snuff, I could make money through hunting. At least as a temporary measure.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Ryuga stared at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a second head. “Pardon?” he asked. Must have thought my Babel stone failed and that I was suddenly speaking nonsense, such was his confusion.

“I said I shall take it,” I replied, turning to fully face him. I had the distinct feeling he didn’t want me living near his village, and I could not blame him. The iudex may not have known anything of my past, but I must have given off some unpleasant air through my presence alone.

But, hells below, I wasn’t in a mood to go trekking up through the wilderness or along the coast to find another place to try buying.

Tiode seemed nice enough spot, had all the things a man could need. Plus living by the coast gave me a vantage point to see Novos’ war fleets if my old master ever set his eyes upon the east. A chance for a head start was important, any fugitive will agree.

The old man sighed, resigned to this. “Very well,” he said. “If you have the funds, then I will not stop you. You understand the risks of this land, and so you cannot say I have not been forthright and honest with you.”