“Why don't we clear the trees further?” Alden asked, trying to take his mind away from the upcoming monster threat. “Wouldn’t it give the guards a better view from the watchtowers? As it stands, it only makes it easier for monsters to hide so close to us."

  Vusato’s mouth was set in a thin line. “We clear out around the wall every spring when people come back from Garitus, but the forest starts to creep in after a few months if we don’t keep at it—which we can't. Forest clearing is hard work and costs money—axes, saws, horses to drag the felled trees away, wages for the labourers... You also have to think of who could do the work. Most of the able-bodied men who could wield an axe to cut trees are away mining iron in the northern hills from early spring to late autumn. We certainly don’t have the gold to hire people from outside the village to stay for a few months and clear the forest.” His voice held no pity in it—only the weariness of logic.

  The majordomo continued, "You already know that everyone is nearly out of coin when we return from Garitus in the spring, so we can't afford to waste too much time doing something which won't earn gold. The baron needs to get revenue by selling iron ore, and the workers need to earn their daily wages to buy food for their families. When the villagers work in the iron mines, the baron gains ore to sell and recoup the money he gives as wages, but for forest clearing, he gets nothing. So he has to use his own savings for this. It's not easy, especially right after the end of winter with everyone's pockets sitting empty. So this is the most we can afford to do, unless it were possible to stay here all year long."

  Roderic shifted in his saddle, making Alden wonder for a moment if the horse would croak under the weight of the brawny captain, but so far so good.

  Vusato continued riding beside him as he explained. "Still, after we return in the spring, it takes a few weeks to clear the path from the village to the pit mines in the north, and to remove the snowmelt water from them. That's all the time the baron has to get the immediate surroundings cleared—and that's assuming the village wasn't overrun by monsters in the winter and people had some shelter already. So we use that time productively and clear any new forest growth since the previous spring. There isn't much point in wasting precious working days clearing it any further than this. We need every coin we can earn to feed the people. Mining iron ore is what pays for food, not these trees. It might have been different if we stayed here in winters too, but that would be the height of stupidity."

  The guard captain glanced at Alden. “Even if we clear a lot more ground, we can’t keep the monsters away in the winter anyway. Some of 'em come alone, while others come in packs ranging from dozens to hundreds when the snows start and they don’t return north until the spring. The palisade is good for the small ones during summer, but it’s not built for the things that come down in winter. So it's just not possible to stay here in the winter, or we'd risk the whole village being wiped out by monsters. We've still been lucky that the palisade wasn't broken in the last few winters, so the villagers could get to work right after coming back. Otherwise it takes more than a month for them to even make temporary shacks and rebuild the shops for their wives and parents to run while the men are away in the mines.”

  Alden took a deep breath. It wasn't laziness which was keeping people from clearing the forest. It was the cold, hard reality of life in this world. "I understand... I just wish we could clear more ground or get more people to work the land. You said we import nearly all our food using the river. If we could farm here, we could reduce that dependency and save a lot of gold."

  “You're right,” Vusato said, “but people go where the work pays, and this region of the kingdom isn't known for farming, and for good reason. Even ignoring the cold climate here, the villages simply don't have the safety or stability to tend to their lands for something long-term like farming, especially outside the safety of walls. So in this region, people mainly work in the mines—iron mines in Sarnok, coal mines in Tevrim, limestone quarries in Laridan—although that one's like a dying village now with no demand for the stone these days.

  The majordomo continued wistfully, "A few decades ago, your grandfather wanted to start farming here once we returned from Garitus. Times were good then, and we were earning good coin from both iron and coal in those years, and we had enough savings to actually give it a try. But that was another winter where the whole village was overrun and nothing remained when we returned in the spring, so his savings had to be used to rebuild the village and the walls. Your grandfather also got very sick during those colder months, and passed away later that year, so we never got to start farming. To be truthful, it was still only a vague dream of his, since we simply didn't have enough hands—nothing like the sturdy workforce you'd need to turn these wild forests into orderly fields."

  Alden nodded, wondering if it was possible to craft something like seed drills here. From what he'd seen, the technology level of this medieval world was good enough to make then as long as he provided the proper designs to the carpenters. If they could make these primitive machines, the number of farmers needed would be cut down by nearly a factor of ten right from the beginning, probably by even more, which could allow them to finally start farming here.

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  However, that was only if they could clear the forests and turn them into proper fields, but that wasn't something in his hands. They needed to continue mining iron right until the day they had to leave for the fortress city, so they could earn as much gold as they could to buy food and shelter in the winter months. Another reason was that while making seed drills might still be possible with the help of the local carpenters, he just couldn't create a whole agricultural machinery industry here out of nothing, to create a few bulldozers and excavators to help in clearing the forest. That meant it would have to be done manually, tree after tree, and that would need precious man-hours which they just couldn't spare.

  If only they had one of these mages the majordomo kept talking about... Couldn't they do something to help using their magic? His memories were still vague about what was possible with magic in this world, but it had to be better than nothing, which is what the village had right now.

  Alden tried to picture the work: men leaning on ploughs, furrows in the earth, months of labor under the summer sun that might lead to a single season’s bread at most. Then the snow would come, with a pack of monsters following it, trampling everything and forcing them to start from nothing the next year. It was a sobering thought.

  Roderic glanced at Alden, the sort of look that asked whether Alden even understood the logic of living in a place that had to be abandoned every winter. And truthfully, he didn't. Not really. Even if the others considered him as someone who had lived here since birth, in reality this was going to be his very first winter in a world where they had to leave their homes empty for months at a time. London didn't have to be abandoned every winter, after all.

  He gave a sigh. Farming seemed like a long-term project for now, but he would have to ask around if there was a way to get a mage to help out when he went to the fortress city in the winter with everyone.

  “How many people live in Sarnok, including the manor?” he asked.

  “About 600 in the village, as well as 57 in the manor,” Vusato said.

  Alden nodded. That was hardly enough manpower to do anything, especially without the help from modern machines. Of those 600 villagers, probably less than half would be young, able-bodied men who could do the hard work of farming, but mining iron was at a much higher priority, since that had a guarantee of getting gold by selling the ore in the city.

  Vusato’s eyebrows quirked, noticing him thinking. “You weren’t interested in these things in the past. You used to sleep through my boring lectures about how the barony was run. That seems to have changed for the better. I wonder why...”

  Alden tightened his grip on the reins. Even though he retained the memories of the original Alden, he was not the same guy at all. However, there was no good answer to this question, so he just remained quiet.

  As they neared the treeline, Roderic nudged his horse closer. "You sure about riding till the river?"

  "The Lokir is this village's lifeline," Alden said. "I need to see it."

  With a nod, the captain and another guard took the lead. Alden and the majordomo followed behind them, while the remaining two guards brought up the rear. The road slowly bent away to the southwest ahead of them, the sounds of shouting merchants and hammering smiths in the market street fading into the quieter rhythm of hooves on dirt. The road was hardly more than a pair of parallel dirt tracks marked on the ground from the wheels of passing wagons, but that was probably all he could expect in this world, at least in this remote part of the kingdom.

  The dense forest encroached from both sides of the road, making him wonder what kind of hungry monsters were lying in wait there. His eyes kept switching between the winding road ahead and the menacing forest on the sides—dark despite the light of the midday sun. He had kept only one hand on the rein, the other constantly sitting on the pommel of his sword, just in case it was needed in a hurry.

  They rode in silence for a while, Alden hoping he wouldn't get his first hands-on experience with monsters today. He knew this body had gotten decent training in using a sword, but he just didn't know if he would even be able to lift his sword in time if a monster suddenly appeared in front of them instead of just freezing in fear. It had barely been a day since he had arrived in this world, after all.

  Hearing the sound of a cracking branch from somewhere in the forest, Alden shifted in his saddle, reins creaking under his tight grip. Was that a..? He strained his ears to listen, but there was no other sound after that. Safe for now, he decided.

  Trying to take his mind off the threat of monsters, he looked at the majordomo. “How far do our borders actually go? I mean… where does the barony end?”