The morning air was a translucent grey, sharp enough to lung-burn. A crowd had gathered at the South Slope, not out of hope, but out of a grim, voyeuristic curiosity.
Peasants with hollow cheeks and dirt-stained tunics stood beside men-at-arms who leaned on their spears, smirking.
At the center of the field stood the "Oakhaven Monster."
It was Alaric's moldboard plow, hitched to a pair of weary, low-slung oxen. The heavy wooden beam groaned, and the iron-tipped share glinted dully in the weak dawn light.
"You're going to break the beasts, Alaric," Kaelen called out from atop his destrier. He looked every bit the knight, polished mail, a fur mantle, and a look of weary disappointment. "The South Slope hasn't been turned in a decade. The clay is like iron. Not even a team of eight could slice this sod."
Alaric didn't answer. He stepped up to the handles of the plow. His hands, still blistered from the forge, gripped the smooth oak. He felt the vibration of the oxen's breathing through the wood.
"Hie!" Alaric shouted, snapping the reins.
The oxen strained. The wooden yoke creaked. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
The crowd began to titter, a few soldiers laughed openly. Then, with a sound like a heavy sail tearing in a gale, the earth split.
The vertical coulter sliced through the matted grass, and the iron share dove deep.
As the oxen moved forward, the curved moldboard did exactly what Alaric's 21st-century mind knew it would, it caught the heavy, grey clay and spiraled it upward.
The earth didn't just move, it performed a graceful, heavy somersault, landing upside down in a neat, dark ribbon.
The laughter died instantly.
Alaric struggled to keep the plow steady, his muscles screaming. This body was weak, malnourished, and untrained, but he drove his weight into the handles. He wasn't just plowing a field; he was overturning a millennium of stagnation.
By the time he reached the end of the first furrow, he was drenched in sweat, his chest heaving. He turned the team and looked back. Behind him lay a deep, clean trench, the kind of soil that would protect seeds from the wind and the crows, the kind of soil that breathed.
"Gods above," whispered Old Tom, who had followed the procession. He knelt and ran his hand through the overturned earth. "It's... it's black. The good earth was hiding under the clay all this time."
Count Valerius rode forward, his horse's hooves thudding softly on the grass. He looked at the furrow, then at his son. There was no praise in his eyes yet, only a profound, unsettled confusion.
"One man and two oxen," the Count muttered. "They did the work of four teams in a fraction of the time."
"It's not magic, Father," Alaric said, wiping grime from his forehead. "It's geometry. And we're only getting started. If we plow the whole slope by week's end, we can plant the winter wheat before the hard frost."
"We have no seed for the South Slope," the Bailiff interrupted, stepping forward. He was a pinched man with a ledger tucked under his arm. "The tithe took the surplus. We barely have enough for the Great Fields."
Alaric looked at the Bailiff, his mind flashing to a dozen historical precedents for agricultural credit and communal grain stores. He knew exactly how to find the "invisible" seed, but he couldn't reveal it yet.
"The seed exists," Alaric said, his eyes locking onto the Bailiff's. "It's currently sitting in the floorboards of the granary, rotting because the rats are the only ones who can reach it. Or perhaps it's in the 'shrinkage' you reported last month?"
The Bailiff paled. In the 21st century, Arthur Vance had been a forensic auditor for fun. In this century, he was a wolf in a sheepfold.
"Kaelen," Alaric turned to his brother, who was still staring at the deep furrow. "Stop playing soldier for an hour. Grab a shovel. We have a kingdom to feed."