Chapter 67: News Spread

Unfortunately, the increasingly absurd DivineEmissary rumors weren’t the part of the story spreading fastest.

The simple truth was far more powerful: Althoff survived. Marden had been destroyed. Greymill had been overrun.

Darlow was gone or abandoned. Fellcross had emptied. Smaller hamlets had disappeared so completely that nobody knew whether their residents were dead or merely scattered across the region.

Yet Althoff, the barren territory that most of northern Zulor had considered half-dead before winter even began, had taken refugees into its walls, fed them, armed those capable of fighting, survived a Beast Tide numbering in the thousands, killed a Gold Rank Magic Beast, and remained standing afterward.

Travelers carried that information south. Refugees carried it east and west. Hunters moving between settlements repeated it at campfires.

Survivors searching for relatives heard it from merchants, and people who had spent the first weeks of winter moving without any destination suddenly had one.

Fourteen people arrived the following morning from a small farming hamlet west of Reth. They weren’t lost. They walked directly toward Althoffand told the northern guards that they had heard survivors were being accepted there.

Twenty-three more arrived that afternoon from several shepherd camps and roadside homes, followed by a family of nine the next morning who had traveled nearly two days after hearing about Althoff from a merchant.

Raymond noticed the difference immediately. The earlier refugees had stumbled toward his territory because they happened to be nearby when their homes were destroyed.

These people were choosing Althoff before they ever saw its walls.

Lily expanded the registration tables near the northern gate while Marianne reopened the medical sorting station, and Raymond ordered two damaged storage buildings converted into temporary sleeping quarters until more longhouses could be built.

The numbers weren’t large enough to become a serious problem yet, but the pattern was obvious enough that Raymond called Boris, Harlan, Gideon, Marianne, Lily, and the agricultural specialists into a short meeting to begin planning for additional arrivals.

He didn’t know how many would come, but after everythingthat had happened in northern Zulor, assuming nobody else would show up seemed stupid.

Two days later, a northern gate guard came running into the castle while Raymond was reviewing reconstruction costs and proved him right much faster than expected.

"My Lord, there’s a large group approaching from the northwestern road."

Raymond kept one finger against the repair estimate he had been reading and asked, "How large?"

The guard hesitated before answering, "Several hundred, my Lord. Three hundred at least, perhaps more. They’re traveling with children and wagons."

Raymond immediately pushed himself away from the desk. By the time he reached the northern gate with Boris, Lily, Marianne, and several Knights, the first members of the group had already appeared clearly along the snow-covered road, and Lily eventually counted exactly three hundred and seventeen people.

They moved slowly beneath whatever winter clothing they had managed to save, carrying possessions in sacks, pulling handcarts loaded with tools andblankets, and dragging crude sledges across the snow.

There were elderly men supported between younger relatives, women carrying infants beneath their coats, farmers with axes and pitchforks, hunters with bows, wounded people lying inside wagons, and children walking beside adults with the exhausted obedience of those who had learned too quickly that complaining wouldn’t make the journey shorter.

The sight immediately reminded Raymond of the first refugees from Marden, but there was one important difference.

Those people had arrived looking lost, terrified, and almost surprised that Althoff’s gates were open. This group approached with exhaustion written across every face, yet there was purpose in the way they moved.

They had not discovered Althoff by accident.

They had traveled here because they expected to find something. Raymond ordered the guards to open the outer holding area and allow the group toward the braziers while Marianne immediately began identifying the injured.

Lily prepared the registration tables with the efficiency of someone who had somehow turned receiving hundreds of displaced people into a normal administrative procedure.

Boris moved among the hunters and armed men, asking whether anything had followed them, while Raymond remained near the gate until an older man separated himself from the front of the group and approached.

He appeared somewhere in his late fifties, although hunger and exhaustion probably made him look older, with a mostly grey beard, a coat repaired in severalplaces, and an iron-headed spear that looked as though it had spent more years protecting livestock than fighting Magic Beasts.

He stopped several steps from Raymond, planted the spear beside himself, and bowed his head. "Lord Althoff. My name is Oren. I was the headman of Reth Village."

Raymond’s expression immediately sharpened, and Boris stepped closer at the name.

The last report they had received about Reth said nearly two hundred people had been trapped by Magic Beasts, yet there were more than three hundred standing outside the gates now.

"We heard Reth was surrounded," Raymond said, looking beyond Oren toward the families still entering the holding area.

Oren nodded slowly. "It was. We held for three days before the eastern road became impossible. Twelve died breaking through the western woods, and another six didn’t survive the journey afterward. We found people from smaller farms and hamlets along the way, then another group that had been moving south from the old ridge road. Some joined us because they had nowhere else to go."

His jaw tightened briefly before he continued. "We originally planned to head toward Harrowden. It was the only larger territory we thought might still have walls worth reaching, but we met a hunter from Fellcross who told us Marden survivors had been accepted into Althoff. Then we heard Greymill people were here too. Yesterday, twotraders told us your town had survived the Beast Tide, so we changed direction."

Raymond glanced toward Boris, who gave him a small look that said the same thing he was thinking. The rumors were spreading faster than either of them had expected.

Raymond returned his attention to Oren and nodded toward the people behind him. "Then you made the right decision coming here. We’ll register everyone first, get the wounded treated, and find somewhere warm for the children and elderly. Housing is going to be tight until we repair some of the damaged buildings, but nobody is sleeping outside. Once the roads become safer, we’ll figure out what your people want to do next."

He expected relief. Maybe gratitude. Instead, Oren remained where he was, his expression becoming strangely serious as he slowly placed his spear on the snow beside him. Raymond noticed the movement and frowned just as the older man lowered himself onto one knee.

"We’re not asking for temporary shelter, Lord Althoff," Oren said, looking up at him with an expression that made Raymond’s prepared instructions disappear from his mind.

Around them, guards continued directing carts through the gate and Marianne’s assistants moved among the wounded, but several people near the front of the refugee group had begun watching their former headman closely.