The Webbing Blade

BRINGING IN THE YIELD

LOUSON DORF BROUGHT his scythe soaring, making it whistle as it displaced the air, and felt the slight, satisfying tremor as the blade caught the stalk and sliced it in two. He watched the stalk as it fell and then landed at his feet with a slight rustle.

Right on top of all the other stalks there.

The sun beat down on him from above, baking him out here. He felt the sweat dampening his hair beneath his straw hat and he reached up to wipe the thin layer away with his index finger. He could smell the dust rising all around him as the other labourers worked the fields, chopping down the corn, ‘bringing in the yield’ as they referred to it around here.

He could stare right to the horizon, to where the fields slanted downwards with the curvature of the land, and he could still make out the labourers, not much more than blurry dots, all of them in constant motion, with their own scythes, slicing away, just bringing in the yield as busy as he was.

Today was Midsummer’s Day and the last concerted effort to bring the yield in, to ship it off to market so they could all get some money to put bread in their own mouths.

Their crops went all the way to the capital, to Ilsnare, where it would feed all the rich folks that lived there, all the rich folks that charged them taxes, those taxes that got Capital Road built and Hnet Eaemur’s little daughter Calli sent along it to a medicine woman. And then later it’d paid for her to get patched up by the medicine woman.

There was no doubt in Lou’s mind that what they did was good, honest work, and they got their recompense for it rightly. And although they might not have the finest things, and although some days it seemed like their budget might not stretch to an extra flask of ginger ale, he supposed himself to be happy.

Or near enough to it not to care all that much.

But he had no reason to think about such deep matters as happiness, really, he had to get his portion of corn in before the sunset. If he failed to do it by then they’d have to turn in. There was no option these days. The cursed animals. Their ragged undead corpses would spring up from wherever they hid from the sun during the day, and they would come hunting.

Anyone caught out in the fields after dark would be killed.

Or left for dead.

Lou held his hand up to shade his eyes from the beating sun, and judged, by the position of the sun in the sky, that it was getting on for about half four in the afternoon. He had another hour or so to bring his yield in. Old Man Junth knew how it was for the working hands, the lean winter and all. He was a fair boss. And so he paid out a winter’s supplement.

But if Lou’s yield came in under weight then he’d be the one that’d get it docked from his wages. And, despite everything else, he just couldn’t afford to lose out on so much as a grung. There was a hard winter just around the corner, rolling in, like there always was, and he had to stock up.

Work would be hard to come by in the coming months what with all the yield brought in, and no planting to be done till the next spring. There were other jobs, protection, serving as a skuller: going out of house during the night to beat back the cursed animals, to prevent them overrunning the village, but he’d never been all that good at that fighting stuff. He never could handle a crossbow, let alone a bow. And he was even worse with a sword. And he just couldn’t so much as get started with anything bigger: a mace or an axe, his tender, slightly doughy muscles just wouldn’t allow it.

Doughy, and he was barely out of his teens. No, one thing was for certain, he was a farmer. That was what he’d been born to be and that was what he’d be till the day he died. All he needed was a farm of his own, then he’d be able to support his family, then there wouldn’t be any need to worry. He’d be the one doing all the hiring and the paying of wages. He’d be the one who got to dock wages from his workers if they brought in a light yield.