The work of distribution was moving at full pace.
In the temporary command tent outside the refugee camp, a detailed map of the domain was spread flat across the long table.
Solomon's finger moved across the rough parchment, tracing a line that left no mark on the surface but cut clearly through everything it touched.
He looked at Olivier. His voice was steady and carried no emotion.
"Olivier. When you assign the refugees, remember one principle."
"Break them up completely."
Olivier's gaze followed the moving finger. That finger moved like a small blade, cleanly partitioning the symbols that represented people across the face of the map.
"People who came from the same village do not go to the same place."
"Anyone who had a group — neighbors, friends, relatives, anyone with existing ties and loyalties — must be separated. Broken apart. Scattered."
Olivier felt something contract in his chest.
He understood the logic behind the order immediately. To completely dismantle the social environments people had come from before they could reconstitute them in the new location — very few people would think of this. The lord in front of him operated with a maturity of method that had no business being in someone his age.
He bowed his head. His tone carried a note of something close to awe.
"I understand, Lord Solomon."
"I will ensure that no uncontrolled faction or gang structure forms during the assignment process that could challenge your authority."
One moment he distributes mercy and hope to his people like a divine figure. The next, he reveals the practiced hand of a lord who has been playing this game for decades. The way those two faces existed in complete harmony on the same person — it was genuinely impossible to read.
Olivier thought for a moment, then decided to raise the question of tax structure — specifically, a proposal to grade the tithe by soil fertility rather than applying a flat rate, which would stabilize the domain's revenues.
He cleared his throat.
"My Lord, regarding the tax—"
Solomon waved him off.
He knew exactly what Olivier was about to say, and he had a better solution. More importantly, he had something more pressing to deal with first.
He raised his head and looked directly at Olivier across the map.
"Now. Let us talk about the smallfolk and equipment."
Olivier blinked.
"We captured a considerable quantity of weapons and armor from the Lege family's armory. Padded cloth armor, cotton armor, chainmail."
Solomon's tone shifted into something slightly strange — the tone of a man discussing a commercial transaction.
"I have decided that soldiers will purchase this equipment from me. Using their share of the battle spoils."
Olivier was briefly certain he had misheard.
"Purchase?"
"My Lord, I... I don't follow. Should this equipment not simply be issued to them directly during wartime?"
Solomon settled back in his chair, leaned into the backrest, and laced his hands together on the table.
"No."
"From this point forward, on my lands, every family that receives a grant of commonland bears an obligation to provide one qualified soldier in wartime."
The words came out unhurried, each one landing in Olivier's chest like a stone thrown into deep water.
"Every family holding commonland must maintain their own padded or cotton armor, along with a spear and shield."
"Every family holding forty Solomon-acres or more must maintain their own chainmail and longsword."
"One household — one fully equipped soldier."
Solomon rubbed his chin. He had thought this through carefully. The domain's existing smallfolk all held at minimum five acres — twenty Solomon-acres. Under the drastically reduced tax burden he had just announced, equipping one family member with a set of padded armor that would last for generations was not an unreasonable demand. The only difficulty was access to the goods.
Especially given that the soldiers had all come back from the campaign sitting on substantial windfalls — and more than fifty of them now held ten acres or more (forty Solomon-acres), land productive enough to rent out to tenant farmers.
Olivier stopped breathing.
Solomon continued in the same unhurried tone, like an artist describing a painting that was already finished.
"The armor we captured — that is what we are offering them."
"They can purchase it using what they took from the battlefield."
"Those who come up short can run a tab. We distribute the equipment and they pay in installments — or settle the balance with future battle spoils."
The tent went completely silent.
Olivier stood motionless. His mind was working at full speed, pulling at the threads of what he had just been told, trying to understand what was actually being constructed underneath the surface of the words.
Land... military service... equipment... purchase...
The pieces collided, rearranged, and assembled into something that made his scalp go cold.
Olivier sucked in a sharp breath. His whole body locked.
"My Lord...you are...you want to..."
He tried to finish the sentence and found that his throat had gone completely dry.
He understood now why Solomon had distributed battle spoils to every soldier.
This was not a simple scheme to extract coin from soldiers who had come home flush with campaign winnings. This was something of an entirely different order — a system designed to bind every land-holding family in the entire domain permanently to the war machine. Irrevocably.
By fusing land ownership with military obligation at the deepest structural level, Solomon could mobilize a large, well-equipped army in an extremely short time.
And the more terrifying detail: the cost of arming this force would be borne almost entirely by the soldiers themselves. What the lord had to provide was only the land — land that had been taken from enemies to begin with — and the captured equipment, which had also come from enemies.
The soldiers, fighting to protect their own fields and their own families and their own hard-won battlefield gains, would spend their own money willingly on their own armor. They would maintain it. They would upgrade it. They would pass it to their sons.
This was a total domain mobilization system that cost the lord almost nothing, produced soldiers with intrinsic motivation, and scaled automatically as the population grew.
Olivier had lived half a lifetime in the service of great houses. He had never heard of anything like this. He had never imagined anything like this.
And then the 10% tithe came back to him.
He finally understood what it actually was.
It was not mercy.
It was bait.
The thing Solomon was truly taxing was not grain.
It was people.
Tens of thousands of people who would do anything — spend anything, risk anything — to hold onto the land that came with that extraordinary tax rate, and who would therefore show up to every war fully armed and deeply motivated.
Olivier was still submerged in the shock of this realization when the tent flap was thrown open.
Brin's massive frame filled the entrance. In one hand he was holding something that he then, without any ceremony whatsoever, dropped onto the ground.
The something turned out to be a man.
An extraordinarily fat man.
Solomon stared at the fact that Brin had apparently carried this particular human being in one hand and tossed him down like a bundle of laundry. Olivier stared at the complete absence of anything resembling etiquette, mentally noting that this was precisely what happened when you promoted a man who had been a brigand.
The fat man was wearing clothing that had once been expensive and was now torn in several places and thoroughly coated in mud. His small eyes were full of fear and agitation.
Brin's voice was its usual deep rumble.
"Lord Solomon!!"
"The merchant you asked us to find — we turned up this one in the refugee camp."
"He's been insisting he's a merchant, not a refugee, and wants us to let him go."
The fat man looked up from the ground, saw Solomon in the seat of authority, and his expression transformed as completely as a man's expression can.
He scrambled to his knees using all four limbs simultaneously, in a movement that resembled a seal attempting to perform a bow.
"My Lord!! Merciful lord!! My name is Hebbard!! By the Seven I swear it's true!! I am a merchant!! I am genuinely not a refugee!! Please!!"