Medieval Knight System: Building the Strongest Empire Ever!

Chapter 317: Ladder Between the Classes

To Brian, who had no idea what had happened, I explained it away as the man having left on urgent business. Well, it was nothing more than a light jab, hardly something others needed to know about.

In any case, the interviews continued. Besides nobles, there were lower knights of Radensdorf and former mercenaries as well. As for the mercenaries, I accepted most of them as long as they weren’t extreme cases.

And then the peasant boys I’d been most curious about sat down before me, fidgeting awkwardly. Only when Brian glared at their persistently unmannered behavior did they sheepishly mind themselves.

How would peasants know noble etiquette?

Don’t be so stiff about it.

"You ride quite well. Who taught you horsemanship?"

"The man at the ranch taught us!"

The boy’s voice shook badly, probably from nerves. They had neutral dispositions, but they didn’t seem like bad kids on the whole. Not everyone who passed the interviews had a positive disposition.

They might not be as righteous as my current knights, but I selected anyone whose disposition was manageable enough to follow orders, even one that leaned negative. It couldn’t be helped. Positive dispositions were rare, and negative ones were overwhelmingly common.

Having commanded all sorts of cavalrymen, I’d developed a decent eye for people by now, even without relying on the scouter. In that sense, these peasant boys seemed like they’d be worth something if trained well.

"Please pick us! We’ll do anything!"

"We want to become like the Gale Knight too!"

There was desperation in the boys’ eyes. They reminded me of Hans, and my heart softened a little. As I deliberated, Brian seemed worried I might actually pick them.

"Er, Baron? Mercenaries are one thing, but taking in peasant brats like these..."

"I said rank wouldn’t matter, so picking a few from among the peasants should be fine too."

"But won’t it damage the Gale Knights’ prestige?"

"I’ve taken in Hungarians. What’s a few peasants on top of that?"

As if I ever cared about such things.

Most of the first class of Gale Knights were commoners too.

Besides, I thought letting down a ladder between the classes wasn’t such a bad thing. Who knows? Those peasant boys might grow into exceptional cavalrymen someday. History has plenty of heroes born as commoners.

Brian was skeptical, but I granted them admission. The boys whooped and cheered, practically jumping for joy, but first I threw cold water on their excitement. The pack horses they’d brought had almost certainly been stolen from home.

"What? R-return them? They’ll beat us to death!"

"If you did wrong, you take your beating. Go get beaten, then come back."

The boys’ eyes spun wildly as they tried to weasel out of it somehow, but I sent them home without mercy. They had a cunning disposition similar to Bodo’s, but even so, they were still in the palm of my hand.

I planned to assign them to the reserves and work them hard so they couldn’t entertain any other ideas. If their endurance for grueling training ran as deep as their desperation, they’d be able to grow into fine cavalrymen.

If not, then my eye was simply wrong.

When the next interviewee entered, Brian’s eyes went wide.

"I am Borges, of a gravekeeper family from southern Radensdorf."

"Baron, peasants are one thing, but a gravekeeper..."

In medieval eyes, those who work close to corpses are religiously unclean. They’re better off than executioners, but from where I stand, it’s all much the same. A pity, really.

If he recoils at a gravekeeper, then I, a friend to executioners, must seem absolutely dreadful to him. The gravekeeper Borges was so used to that reaction that he didn’t even spare Brian a glance.

His disposition was honesty (good), my favorite. I took a liking to this Borges fellow, who’d found the courage to come despite society’s scorn. He reminded me of Arzt and Leto, too.

Beyond him, a man named Metzger, a butcher by trade, also had a decent disposition, so I selected him. Of course, unlike the nobles, knights, and former mercenaries who could serve as immediate assets, all of these men were organized into the reserves.

Naturally.

There’s no way a peasant, a gravekeeper, and a butcher had ever seen war.

Brian didn’t understand at all, but the selections were mine to make, so I picked even those of humble, lowborn stock (butchers, cleaners, gravekeepers, construction laborers, and so on) for the reserves, as long as they showed promise.

After all the pruning, I selected a total of 85 men. Twenty of them were of noble birth and the rest commoners, but aside from the reserves, all of them had their own horses and equipment, so I didn’t need to provide for them separately.

"This is outrageous! How could you take men like them!"

But there were those who balked at the inclusion of a butcher and a gravekeeper. One noble confronted me, demanding to know how such lowly men could be granted a place in a sacred knightly order.

"The recruitment notice stated that rank would not matter. Did you fail to read it, sir?"

"Even so, a gravekeeper and a butcher?! I cannot serve alongside such men!"

"If my selection standards displease you, then leave."

And so a few nobles and knights stormed out in loud protest. Even then, 72 successful candidates remained. They watched me with uneasy expressions.

I paid it no mind whatsoever.

These men were now my new subordinates.

"Welcome to the Gale Knights."

Even if we’re derided as a baseborn order that recruits the lowly, I have no intention of changing my policy. In a world where the class system is absolute, I want to offer at least one small window for people to rise.

And through selections like these, I hoped that someday a great talent would emerge from among the commoners. Because while the present me is a noble, the original me was an ordinary working man.

"Baron, it appears that Count Palatine Heinlein is connected to the Breisburg Finance Department. As it turns out, he’s related by marriage to the Count Reinfeldt family."

"Related to the Finance Minister’s family? So he was no ordinary count palatine."

The thick scent of conspiracy hung over Beort’s report. But the current Finance Minister was under house arrest, and his son Adelbert wielded full authority over the Finance Department.

"Also, Breisburg once dispatched an investigator here."

"Ledger fraud broke out among the financial bureaucrats, so of course they’d send an investigator."

"That investigator’s records still exist."

Beort presented me with a worn scroll. But aren’t investigation records like these usually kept in the administrative offices? When I stared at him, he awkwardly broke the silence.

"The truth is... we bribed the archivist at the administrative offices and borrowed it for a while."

"Apparently anyone can serve as archivist for the Radensdorf administrative offices. How much did it cost?"

"About 10 silver coins. The three of us pooled our money and barely managed to persuade him."

Ah, I never gave them an operating budget, did I?

To a poor noble, 10 silver coins is a considerable sum. I dug through my strongbox and handed over a leather pouch containing 500 silver coins. Beort accepted it, dumbfounded.

"Cover your expenses with that from now on."

"Th-thank you. As for the money we spent..."

"You may reimburse yourselves from the operating funds."

Beort had apparently been worried I might not pay them back. Good grief, so they took me for a miser. As if I couldn’t cover an expense that small.

The thing I hate most is being told the rich are the stingiest of all.

"Did you read the contents?"

"I believed reporting to you first took priority, Baron."

"What a smooth excuse. Once this case is wrapped up, your first order of business is learning your letters."

"I-I’ll keep that in mind."

It’s true that nobles are well educated, but fewer of them are literate than you’d think. Even my retainers can read and write, so it’s an embarrassment for a vassal noble not to know his letters.

The records contained a detailed investigation into the five men.

For the three financial bureaucrats, including Ivan, there had been solid evidence, but the other two had been released for lack of evidence. The report stated that these three were the ringleaders of the embezzlement and that the case was thereby closed.

Hm, so they just wrapped it up and filed it away.

All I gained was the personal information of the other two men, and I wasn’t sure it was worth 10 silver coins. But the moment I saw the final investigator’s signature, I couldn’t help being stunned.

The man behind that signature was a truly unexpected figure. He was of the court viscount family that the Finance Minister had thrown out as bait to keep Adelbert in check: Elsheimer.

I’d heard Viscount Elsheimer had died at a relatively young age.

Rumor had it he’d worn his body out frequenting the brothels.

"So the investigator was Werner von Elsheimer."

"Isn’t the Elsheimer family the one that oversees the tax collectors?"

"Isn’t it quite the coincidence? Elsheimer and I have crossed paths in more ways than one."

At present, that family has completely escaped the Finance Minister’s influence.

That’s because Adelbert, in order to seize control of Elsheimer, sent Inspector General Mort as a live-in son-in-law to the elder of the two Elsheimer heiress sisters. And Mort’s rival for that match had been none other than me.

I received 350 silver coins as the price for backing out.

That money let me marry Hilda, so it was a tidy deal.

To think the Finance Minister had been extending his dark reach not only into Breisburg but all the way into the east. This was an extension of the royal tax embezzlement case.