For about two more days,
Maomao
and the others
helped
Nenshin with his work.
Nenshin's work was quite close to the answer Maomao had been seeking.
She drove the hoe into the earth.
Turning over the damp soil,
she found earthworms, ants, and small beetles, along with elongated clumps.
Looking more closely, she could see even thinner eggs strung together in a line.
The chicken that had been pecking at earthworms
next stabbed at the egg clump.
(Locust eggs, are they?)
She wanted to calculate how many there were per tan of land, but there was no time for that.
When Maomao spotted an egg the chicken had missed pecking, she picked it up and dropped it into her jar.
(This is probably on the higher end, isn't it?)
The clumps were enough to make anyone who disliked insects go insane.
The contents of Maomao's jar were still on the low side.
Even for Maomao, who was used to dissecting locusts, these were not something she cared to look at.
Among the skilled farmers,
the elder Rahan had a completely different way of setting his hips to the hoe,
and Basen's brute strength was staggering.
The amount of soil they turned over was on a different level.
(Good thing Basen was doing a proper job of it.)
I had been worried about what to do if I was told this wasn't work for a warrior, but Jinshi's considerable concern about the locusts had apparently worked in my favor. He cooperated without complaint.
Thanks to that, the guards and farmers he'd brought along were also lending a hand. It looked like we'd finish digging up the ground by the end of today.
And, the one who had at some point joined them
was Suzume.
She was toddling about near the two of them, collecting locust eggs. Trailing behind her were two children — the siblings who had eaten the roasted sweet potatoes. They seemed to think that if they helped out, they'd get more potatoes.
"Maomao-san, Maomao-san, there are lots here — do you want to see?"
"Suzume-san, Suzume-san, I don't want to see them.
Mantis
egg
cases,
however, I'll gladly take."
The eggs of mantises
are called sangyoushou —
a medicinal ingredient. Since they can't be harvested in large quantities, they're fairly valuable.
"These eggs are about to hatch. Tiny ones are coming out."
"It is spring already, after all."
A locust generation lasts
three months
or so. According to the encyclopedia kept at the fortress of the Son family, they lay roughly a hundred eggs at a time. Individuals born in spring would then lay new eggs in summer.
They don't breed year-round, but at this time of year, the eggs laid in autumn were hatching. The autumn plowing was aptly named — eggs laid hidden in the ground, once exposed, would become food for birds and small animals.
(Did Raban mention something about this before?)
He might have called it geometric growth, or something to that effect.
A pair of rats produces twelve offspring, bringing the total to fourteen. Of those twelve offspring, the six females and the mother — seven rats in all — each produce another twelve.
Of course, this formula is purely theoretical. Not all the rats survive to maturity.
However, if locust populations were to increase in the same way as this geometric growth, then reducing their numbers in the earlier stages becomes all the more important.
(One cluster of migratory locust eggs holds a hundred; ten clusters hold a thousand; a hundred clusters hold ten thousand.)
By dealing with them here, you can reduce the number of locusts that appear later by several times over.
Apparently, migratory locusts tend to lay their eggs in somewhat moist soil.
(With a river nearby and an abundance of grass for feed, this whole area is practically an ideal breeding ground, isn't it?)
The fact that they deliberately don't cultivate fields here is probably meant to lure the locusts.
Even if there are several villages built this way across Xuxi Province, how many of them are actually functioning as intended right now?
Nenshin approaches, carrying the jar of locust eggs.
"After this, we just burn them and we're done."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"Last year, this step came too late, and we ended up letting a huge number of locusts get away."
The farmers in this village had indeed said that the insect damage was severe last year.
"Was the harvest significantly reduced?"
Nenshin nods.
"They had nothing saved up — just barely enough food for themselves. If they paid taxes, they starved. They wouldn't have had the means to buy daily goods from traveling merchants either, so they probably had to sell off their livestock."
"But the lord not only exempted them from taxes — he even provided support?"
"Exactly. A truly generous lord, that one."
Once again, Nenshin made a look as though he were spitting something out.
"What's bothering you about it? You seem to have some kind of grievance."
Maomao decided to ask outright.
"I know it's rich, coming from a former thief, but people like that will take anything they can get. Those who keep demanding without limit — they're just like locusts, if you ask me. If you don't want to starve, then make sure you don't starve — go work your fields. But instead, even if they barely put in any effort and the harvest fails, they still get money handed to them. When you can get far more by doing nothing than by honestly working the land, what would you do, huh?"
"Is that why... the fields in this village are so neglected?"
"That's right. Last year with the insects was the same. They just stood there gawking at their own fields being devoured by locusts. The village head was busy figuring out how to squeeze sympathy out of the lord, composing nothing but sob stories. Meanwhile I was pulling locusts off the leaves one by one and killing them — I started feeling like a fool."
Perhaps the terror of past locust plagues had changed Nenshin. It didn't seem like the behavior of a former thief who had committed every evil deed imaginable.
(No... that's not it.)
Nenshin had probably always been a serious person at heart. He'd simply learned the bow and been taught to kill people as instructed because he was born and raised as a thief.
Ethics are not something you are born with.
"And judging by how things look in the village, it seems you've received quite a lot of money."
"That's right. For the past dozen years or so, nothing's changed. Even when harvests are poor, the lord helps us out. He's a good lord to all of us."
(A good lord, huh.)
Where did the money for all that support come from? Was it wrung out of trade? If the Western Capital was as prosperous as all that, perhaps there was no issue diverting money to the villages.
"If you're going to send money back anyway, I'd think it'd be better to build at least one waterway."
With less labor spent hauling water, more time could go toward other work. New fields could be cleared, too.
"Well,
Rikuson—
that fellow said the same thing."
"Is that so."
Once they returned to the Western Capital, she would need to verify how Rikuson had learned of the former serfs' existence.
"By the way, I hate to have you helping out like this, but didn't you two have some other business in this village?"
"Business..."
Maomao rested her chin on the handle of her hoe and closed her eyes.
"Oh!"
Maomao looked around. Not content with merely turning the soil,
ridges—
she approached Rahan, who had begun building them.
"We're not planting anything here."
"⁉"
(Oops, that look on my face—force of habit.)
She denied it, but she had completely settled into being a farmer.
"By the way, aren't you going to distribute potatoes? I'm pretty sure I brought seed potatoes for that purpose."
"Well, about that..."
Rahan seemed to have his own thoughts on the matter.
"The folks around here have no motivation to work the fields, right? And even if we gave them potatoes, do you think they'd grow them properly? They wouldn't use their existing fields for a new crop, and I doubt they'd have the energy to clear new land."
"Fair point."
Maomao agreed.
"That's why I wanted to meet the one person who actually bothered to maintain proper fields."
"So that's what it was."
"But that old man's probably a lost cause."
"He probably is."
The last former serf in this village. On top of his own fields, he had to perform what was called a festival rite—
Autumn plowing.
—which was supposed to be finished by autumn but had dragged on into spring. No matter how you looked at it, he was short on hands.
"Couldn't we leave one person behind to help?"
She glanced at the other farmers.
"The ones I brought along here came because I was with them. I can't just dump them on unfamiliar land and walk away."
They were people he had personally brought from Huayang Province.
"You've got that right."
Rahan showed an unexpectedly big-brotherly side at the strangest moments. If he'd been born into a normal household, he'd have made a fine eldest son.
"It's a good thing Father isn't here. I had no idea what he'd do if he said he was going to show everyone how great potatoes are."
"Sorry, but I really can't imagine Rahan's Father being that assertive."
He was a mild-mannered man with the same laid-back vibe as Luomen.
"How great potatoes are?"
"He'd go on about the beauty of the flowers, the shape of the leaves, the suppleness of the vines..."
"Can we at least focus on how delicious they are... potatoes... potatoes..."
Maomao spotted the two children trailing behind Sparrow. She set down her hoe and walked over to them.
"Hey, want to eat those potatoes from last time again?"
"I wanna eat them!"
"I wanna eat, I wanna eat!"
The brother and sister's eyes sparkled.
"That was the first time we ever ate anything so sweet. It was sweet like dried raisins."
"Dried raisins?"
"There aren't many sweet things around here, you see. No honey either, and sugar's expensive."
Sparrow balanced a large jar on her head and spun around.
"...Could this be of any use?"
Maomao grinned and headed back to Raban.