Chapter 163 — New Arrivals and Heddy's Worries

Gao Song was in excellent spirits. True, this whole excursion had netted him only a few dozen new arrivals—fewer even than a single slave ship from Tamsan Town—but he had succeeded in establishing contact with the drifters in the wilds north of the White Water River. Initial trust would grow from this foundation of a few dozen people. When he thought of how much labor the domain so badly needed, gathered in this vast, barren land, his joy was immense.

And that was to say nothing of the fact that more than half of these drifters were freemen with some craft, or at least a little worldly knowledge. Their basic quality was higher than that of purchased slaves, which would save a great deal in the education to come.

Serfs could hardly become drifters, for they were bound fast to the land. When famine came, the local nobles would gather their serfs and keep them alive at the lowest possible cost until the famine passed, so as to restore production. Serfs who tried to flee were hunted down and put to death. It was, rather, the freemen of somewhat higher station who in such times lost all their footing and had to flee their homes.

So people sometimes joked that on the lands of certain nobles, freedom cost more dearly than serfdom.

But Heddy, who oversaw the domain's internal affairs, seemed rather worried. She came to Gao Yang: "Progenitor, do you truly mean to gather all the homeless in the wilds on the north bank of the White Water River before the Cold Moon comes?"

Gao Yang had long expected Heddy to come to him. He smiled. "Is there pressure on the grain?"

"There is. If that intelligence is true, the whole of the wilds is now full of refugees, and we will have to feed some four thousand people through this winter. With the population growth of this past stretch, the domain holds only two thousand souls. We would be feeding more than twice our present population in one go. And that is only the secondary problem—grain can be bought with money, after all. Tamsan Town is rich and willing to sell us grain at a low price, so that side is manageable. The real trouble is how to keep order with so many new people all at once. We worked so hard to digest and absorb those purchased serfs and slave laborers into subjects who know the rules and keep the law. To suddenly add four thousand more at a time like this—I fear all the gains of our earlier efforts will be undone. Even if those refugees do not mean any harm."

"We grew from eight hundred to two thousand—more than double—and order did not collapse," Gao Yi said with a smile, looking at Heddy. "So what is there to worry about?"

"That was because the earlier arrivals came before the Frost Moon, when the weather was warm and there were plenty of jobs for them. They could go with the subjects to break new ground, to fell trees, to build houses. By your own words, labor brings reform—plenty of jobs would be the best way to digest and absorb new people. But it is now late in the Frost Moon. Soon we enter the snow-flying Mist Moon, and after that the Cold Moon, when water freezes as it drips. At that time we will have no jobs to offer..."

"Who says there won't be?" Gao Rong grew even merrier. "Why should winter mean no work, and nothing to do but huddle at home eating up the grain? In fact it's just the opposite... I have piles of engineering projects here waiting for hands to finish them."