Sometimes, the problem is like a cockroach, and when you find one, it means that there are many ...... in the house

It's not just McChan that is facing a food crisis – the village of Fletcher and Ralph are also short of food.

Ralph will be short of food, which was previously considered.

Ralph, the knightly leader, is now not under the jurisdiction of Shield Fortress, but under the jurisdiction of Leon. That is, Baron Leon was his superior consul.

However, Ralph was not a knight under Leon, and he had no allegiance to Leon, only allies and superiors.

It's like Rainier's Eledegor, which should belong to Fort Whiteshart geographically, but his superior consul is Duke Elfwan, and Rainier himself is a lion knight loyal to the king.

Ralph is the Knight Captain of the Horn Summoning Rangers, and he is in charge of the Rangers' lives.

His garrison currently has more than three hundred Rangers. Of course, this is not all the rangers of the Horn Calling Ranger Regiment, but only the part that has no property of its own.

Originally, Ralph would take them to farm and graze to support themselves, but his side was a newly built territory, and he didn't have time to plant seeds last season. Raising horses is not a big problem, but people's food stocks are running out.

Count Auden is gone, and his realm is no longer under the administration of Fort Shield, so Fort Shield will naturally not supply him with food.

However, it is said that money can always buy food, and Shield Fort will definitely have a surplus, and the lord is indeed not short of money.

But Ralph had asked, and Baron Leofric, the current keeper of Fort Shield, was afraid to sell - he was only a custodian lord, and he could only call the shots of half of the grain.

Half of his farm taxes were enough for him to feed the army, and the other half he had to transport to the Countess and Joanna, who lived in the village of Kwyn, and there was indeed no surplus of food.

This may have been the deal that Baron Leofrick and the Countess had negotiated in the first place, with Baron Leofrick leading his troops to defend the Shield Fortress and taking on the responsibility and risk of defending against the Cato people, so as to obtain half of the profits of the Shield Fortress.

It's like becoming a tenant of the countess's mother and daughter, but it's really what each side needs.

But Leon really didn't expect them to be such a deal.

Originally, I thought that they were exchanging territories - although Kwyn was nominally a village, it had a large population and was very wealthy, and the income from the territory should not be lower than that of the border fortress of Fort Yongdun, and it was safer.

But unexpectedly, the Countess did not give up the right to rule the Shield Castle, but used the lease method.

Considering that the Countess left Joanna in her hometown of Kwen Village, she did not let Joanna go to Lehman's fiefdom Yin Bien again, nor did she go to Qicha Fortress. The Lord realized that Auden's death would probably have more ripple effects......

Unable to buy food, Ralph had to ask Charles for help, which turned out to be even more lacking......

Charles has paid off in the past few days, and Flache's farm tax will be about sixty thousand pounds of grain.

Because he had just taken office, in order to win the hearts of the people, Charles only collected 40% of the tax. In fact, this is a good man who can be praised by the villagers, and Count Auden received fifty percent of the original income.

Originally, this grain was surplus and could be used to subsidize Ralph, but after a perfect revenge, Baron Herry Ward temporarily left most of the sentries in the village of Fletcher to garrison.

This is not to call the Horn to the Ranger Regiment to pledge allegiance to Leon, but to have the sergeants investigate and protect Charles, the son of the former Grand Master.

It was a bonus, but it was also a nuisance—six hundred sentinels, six thousand pounds of food......

But who told the lord to show off his wealth and say that he could buy Changhe Town.

Of course, the lord actually wished that the horn summoned the rangers to eat all his food and spend his money, he thought that the shield castle could sell food, and he never thought that the countess would rent it.

After all, whoever eats eats, then you have to work for someone's family. As long as it is in the vicinity of Long River and is not part of the civil war between the local nobles, the lord can send sentinels.

Of course, they won't do it too far away from the town of Long River - the credo of the Clarion Call Ranger Regiment is to defend the town, not to fight for power.

Many of the Sentinels have their own property, but not in Fletcher, but in various parts of Long River.

People are willing to go to the border to station to protect the village, and they have to let people eat.

So Charles said that the gap was quite large - Fort Shield didn't sell grain, and they had nowhere else to buy it at the border.

Carefully calculated, counting the seeds to be used for the next season, Mai Xiangling needs to replenish 100,000 pounds of grain, and the village of Fletcher and Ralph are about the same.

That's a gap of 300,000 pounds of food.

That's almost half of the agricultural tax at Fort Brave......

With such a large food shortage, where can we replenish it?

The merchants had recently exhausted their own reserves in order to sell people, and they were unable to provide supplies for Mai Xiangling.

Moreover, most businessmen do not want to do the grain business for the time being.

After all, all the grain in the Pande Continent is in the hands of the noble lords, and those big nobles are not as easy to deal with as Lord Li Ang.

Unprocessed grain, on the other hand, is low-profit, risky, requires a large number of manpower, and has high costs and losses......

Therefore, the businessmen who do the food business are basically middlemen, and they prefer to deal in processed foods, such as bacon, bread, sausages, etc.

But after Mai Xiangling's 'food world' came out, there was definitely no need for businessmen to come to Mai Xiangling to take their own humiliation......

Besides, merchants are merchants after all, and even if they have a good relationship with the lord, it is impossible to completely ignore their own interests. The most obedient merchants before were all chosen by the lord to open entertainment venues in various places.

Trying to get merchants to go to the border to supply them can only work if they start a large-scale war and ensure the safety of the caravan.

Then you can only find nearby towns to purchase.

Of course, money is no problem, but can you buy so much in nearby villages and towns?

The largest villages and towns in the vicinity of Fletcher are the town of Changhe and the village of Ermined. But these two places are now under the control of Archduke Alma, who is said to be in charge of his son.

And Charles is the son of Auden, and Leon himself has a conflict with Alma, this relationship, it would be good if there was no fight, and I am afraid that it would be impossible to talk about buying food......

As for the area around Changhe Town, there are indeed many other scattered small villages. But they were all small knights who only lived in a hundred or so people, and they wouldn't even be marked on the map.

This kind of small place does not produce much, and it has to pay taxes to the higher lords, and it is estimated that there is very little surplus grain.

And the village of Truburun near Mai Xiangling was just entrenched by Rainier with thousands of bandits at the beginning of the year, and now I am afraid that there are few people.

Wait a minute...... The lord's eyes lit up......

Trumbrunn!

Recently, it's been training and classes, and I've neglected this place!

The people in this village must have been plagued by Rainier, but the wheat fields are not necessarily......

The grain planted by Trubrun last year should still be there, but the people are gone, maybe there will be a lot of surplus food!

"Sarah, who is the current lord of Trubrun?"

The lord came to the spirit.

Sarah didn't know that she had been busy training lately, and she hadn't been out for a long time, and now she felt that she was about to lose her position as a foreign officer—how could there be a day when the cat was in the territory.

However, for some reason, she enjoyed the feeling of abusing the recruits......

But fortunately, Amy, who has been gathering intelligence, knows.

"Teacher, Tlubrunn is the domain of the Lady Bella's family, the legacy of Duke Elfwan. I haven't heard of changing fiefdoms recently...... It's possible that no one cares anymore. ”

Nobody cares?

So that's the case, no wonder Rainier was able to let a large number of bandits gather there at that time.

Since no one cares, then this belongs to the treasure land of feng shui!

Originally, I was going to buy it, but now it seems that maybe it's a zero-dollar purchase!

"Let's go, let's go see if the grain in Trumbrun is ripe and ......"

With a large number of subordinates, the lord hurried to Troubrun, a hundred miles away.

Except for the security patrol, he brought all the 100 soldiers in his hand.

The reason why he brought so many people was not because he was worried that there would still be bandits, but because he was stationed in the past to occupy the territory - if Trubrun was really unattended, it would be the same as the nature of Elledeg at the beginning!

The village was destroyed by bandits, uninhabited, and the lord gave up protection, so even if it was borderless, it could be occupied first.

Although Ms. Bella, the 'old pregnant woman', certainly did not deliberately 'give up' the village, it was clear that she would not be able to take care of it for a while......

Even if someone comes to claim it back in the future, this season's grain can be harvested first anyway.

Even in modern rural areas, this kind of thing is very common - all the family members have gone out to work, and there is no one to take care of the crops in the field, so the neighbors will definitely 'help' with the harvest.

If you have a bargain, you can't take advantage of it.

……

Trubrun is really unattended, and there is not even a dog at the entrance of the village.

There is indeed wheat in the fields, which have already set ears, and some of them have even matured early.

But the growth is not good, because the fields are overgrown with weeds, and many birds are already guarding here.

And after entering the center of the village, the lord's mood of taking advantage suddenly collapsed.

The village is full of black-brown bones, and the sky is full of mosquitoes and flies, which cannot be dispersed.

The bones were devoid of flesh and mutilation, apparently eaten by animals.

Cobweb-strewn houses make up a silent village that looks eerie even during the day.

In this kind of environment, no one will live in it anymore, even if there are still people in the village, they will leave, and those who pass by will not stay here.

Leon and Amy both frowned, they didn't know the situation a hundred miles away, they didn't expect it to be such a miserable situation here.

The lord had no cavalry before, and the patrol range of the patrol team was only a few dozen miles around Mai Xiangling, and it was difficult to change shifts no matter how far away, and it was difficult to detect the specific situation hundreds of miles away from the territory.

This is also the cruelty of this era.

A hundred miles is already a very long distance for people at this time. If it is not deliberately publicized, what happens hundreds of miles away is often difficult to know for months.

But Leon still didn't understand.

Lady Bella's may have been controlled by Duke Alma and is not capable of managing here, which is understandable.

But Alma probably didn't know the situation here, otherwise he wouldn't have sent someone to manage it for so long.

This is not a small village, and judging by the number of houses, it was once inhabited by at least several hundred people...... It won't be left unattended.

If Alma really didn't know what was going on here—what was Lehman going to do?

Lehman had passed through the village with the lion knights, and he had spotted the bandits' tracks here, so he had naturally seen the situation here.

But he never mentioned the tragic situation here, as if he didn't care about the death of so many people.

When he had the Lion Knights kill the bandits, he told Leon that he thought the bandits were charging at him.

It doesn't make sense.

Ordinary people would surely tell Leon that these bandits killed the civilians of a village, and they must die.

But Lehman apparently didn't inform the king or the Duke of Alma about the situation here, so what did he mean?

Maybe in his eyes, civilians are not human at all?

But even so, it is always necessary to talk about the situation, even if it is regarded as a mustard, it will not be said that it will not be mentioned.

But the current situation is obviously that no one knows that the village was slaughtered here, otherwise it would not have been possible to even collect the bones.

Why did Lehman keep his mouth shut?

This village ...... Wasn't it plagued by Rainier's thousand bandits?

Lehman with the Lion Knights, is he really searching for heresy?

Forget it, no matter what, think about your own affairs first, food matters.

"Cover your mouth and nose, brothers, and clean up the bones first......

Leon began to instruct his men to work, and then gave Amy a face cover: "Amy, plant my flag at the entrance of the village, since there is no one to take care of it here, then I will take care of it from now on." ”

With hundreds of people, trying to clean up a small village is actually very fast.

In just one day's work, the village was no longer in a dilapidated and terrifying state.

Smoke piles were lit all over the village to disperse mosquitoes and flies, roads were cleared, and bones were buried in the wilderness outside the village.

With fireworks, there will be life, and people will be much more excited.

However, during the day, Leon and Amy carefully inspected the situation of the farmland and found that the results were not optimistic.

No one has been in care of it for too long, and the condition of the wheat field is very bad, and it can add up to 50,000 or 60,000 pounds, which is far from enough.

There are still 250,000 pounds left in the shortfall.

But the only places that are most likely to buy so much grain right now are Changhe Town and Kewen Village – the rest of the world is either too far away or there is not so much surplus to buy.

However, Changhe Town is controlled by Alma, and it is not easy to talk about it, so I can only let Amy go over and try it - Bailubao itself also needs to buy food, and Amy is the 'general manager of Bailubao Grain and Oil Company'.

The lord himself planned to go to the village of Kwen first, hoping that the countess would be willing to sell her half of the agricultural tax at Shield Castle.

This is something to do.

After all, the border was on the side of the fortress, and in order to prevent the Gatu people from going south to grab grain, they usually harvested in advance.

Due to the large amount of food loss on the way, the lord intends to negotiate this matter before the food is delivered to the village of Kwyn at Fort Shield, so that Baron Leofrick can send it directly from Fort Shield to Fletcher, so as to reduce the loss of transportation on the road.

The lord is actually very reluctant to travel hundreds of miles to transport grain.

Grain is heavy and occupies space, and it is very troublesome to transport, after all, the carriages of this era have no shock absorption, and the maximum load is about 1,000 pounds at most—this must be a carriage of relatively good quality.

100,000 pounds of grain would have to be transported by hundreds of wagons.

But if you buy 100,000 pounds of grain from hundreds of miles away, and remove the losses along the way, it would be good to have 60,000 pounds when you get it back.

As a result, the amount of food that needs to be procured is much larger than the original shortfall.

In these days, the mud road is very difficult to walk, the heavy car journey will be very slow, and it is easy to fall into the mud puddle if you are not careful, and the 'small car accident' such as the wheel falling off or the vehicle rolling over is not an accident in this era, but a daily ......

The journey will be slow due to rain soaking or other accidental losses of food on the way.

Not only that, but the people along the way also have to consume the horses to chew, and they must prepare enough horse food to avoid the horses striking halfway.

Doesn't it sound like a hassle?

And that's not all......

Pande Continent is full of bandits, and Rainier recruited thousands of bandits within a month, so you can imagine the overall level of security on this continent.

And food is a very easy thing to rob.

After all, the bandits also have to eat......

And the harvest season is just the time when the bandits frequently loot.

Naturally, the bandits would not attack the castles of the great lords, and the grain convoys on the road were their easiest targets.

In Pande's April and May, or September and October, the convoy carrying food was probably only less dangerous near the Long River Forest than the Noldor Elven Maiden......

In these days, it is so troublesome to transport grain.

Temporarily placing all the infantry in Troubrun, the lord took with him the guards and all the cavalry troops—only forty men.

Klose escorts Amy to Long River with his personal guards.

And the lord rushed to the village of Kwen with his cavalry.

The main reason for leading cavalry is that the foot is fast, and when you get to Kewen only to talk about business, you don't need to transport grain, so there is no need to bring too many people for the time being.

If the town of Changhe is willing to sell grain, it can be transported directly to Mai Xiangling by waterway through the El River, which is also the least expensive mode of transportation in this era.

……

Along the banks of the Tongtian River, Li Ang hurried to Kewen Village.

Kewen is a subordinate village of Changhe Town, located in the upper reaches of the Tongtian River, more than 300 miles west of Changhe Town.

This is also the farthest precinct from the town of Long River.

As the town has expanded over the years, Kwyn has become a relatively safe hinterland, gradually developing into a large village with a population of no less than 7,000 people.

The village with this kind of population is already a big town in Pande, and it is about to catch up with the population of White Deer Fort.

But after walking into Kewen Village, it seems to have the illusion of being sparsely populated.

Because it's not the kind of village where everyone gathers together.

There are many farms in the village of Kwen, but they are sparse and have a very wide distribution. In addition, it is a hilly area, and along the way, there are often only a few households that can be seen at the same time and in the same location.

In fact, this is what most villages on the Pander continent look like, completely different from those villages east of Changhe Town that have been developed for less than a hundred years.

One word can explain it - the land is vast and sparsely populated.