Chapter 1348: Accursed land(1)

Vilon squinted as he stepped down from the rear of the cart, the harsh rays of the midday sun hitting him straight in the iris of his eyes. It felt like receiving a slap to the cheek immediately after waking from a night of hard drinking or, at least, that was what Vilon assumed it felt like, considering he had never actually gotten himself drunk.

He had, spent his youth watching a spectacular model of how not to live, and the lesson had stuck.

Still , drinking or not drinking all Vilon could feel at that moment was dizziness.

The sprawling refugee settlement unfolded before him, so vast and chaotic it could almost pass for a city, if one squinted hard enough and ignored the mud. It possessed walls, at least; stout, three-meter-high timber barriers reinforced at the base by a bristling ring of sharp palisades protruding from the dark earth like the teeth of some sleeping beast’s maw.

It was large enough to serve as the wooden skeleton of a frontier town. Though Vilon couldn’t see past the heavy gates, the thick, rising columns of woodsmoke and the deafening, discordant hum of thousands of voices made it entirely clear that the interior was packed to the brim

.

According to the rumors along the high road, dozens of these massive crown-sanctioned camps had been hastily thrown up across the conquered territory of Oizen. They hosted thousands of displaced souls who had lost their homes, their livestock, and their livelihoods. They were people whose only remaining option was to starve in the winter frost, unless they accepted the hand extended by their conquerors. And also the very architects of their ruin, the young knight judged silently.

Still, a drowning man does not inspect the hand that pulls him from the deep. The war might have been decided at the bloody siege of the Bastion and the slaughter at the Ford, but the it had not been confined to the shield-walls of the respective armies.

When the iron-shod legions of Yarzat had thrusted their blades into the Oizenian host, they had already bloodied their steel on the peasants, leaving behind the charred ashes of every hamlet that had dared to swear allegiance to the Sun.

"Ser, you’re finally awake!"

A rather too-joyful voice chirped from behind the cart.

"I am," Vilon yawned, stretching his arms until his bones creaked. "Though I didn’t expect to sleep through the better part of the morning." Truthfully, his bones ached, and he wouldn’t have disdained another few hours of rest. His eyes drifted down to his saddled mount standing nearby.

"I already took care of Chestnut, ser! Saddled, fed, and brushed him top to bottom," Owen said excitedly. The boy stepped up to the massive destrier, casually scratching the sensitive patch of skin right behind the stallion’s ears. Chestnut, notorious for his foul temper, merely half-closed his large eyes and leaned into the touch.

It was a display of affection the horse had never once allowed Vilon.

Clearly, the brute has favorites, the knight thought with a faint twitch of his brow. No doubt earned through the small fortune in apples Owen sneaks him whenever my back is turned.

"Would you like to break your fast, ser? We still have a generous slab of smoked rabbit left," Owen offered, pulling a dark, salted piece of meat from his satchel and thrusting it toward his master. "I’ve already eaten my fill, so the rest is yours."

Vilon shook his head, pushing the boy’s hand away gently. "We’ll be having a proper mid-day meal soon enough. There’s no need to eat alone in the dirt. We’ll get ourselves inside this wooden monstrosity, see where a man can find a warm tavern stall, and ask for directions to where we are off."

"And then straight off to the tourney we go! Right, ser?" Owen’s eyes practically gleamed.

"Could not have phrased it better myself, lad. Off to make our stories known, win a mountain of royal silver, and etch our fame through all the principalities of the south!"

Chestnut let out a loud, highly skeptical snort, and both the knight and his squire laughed at the grand dreams they still allowed themselves to harbor.

Before any songs could be sung, however, they had to actually cross the threshold.

The knight leaned against the wooden frame of the cart, watching a miserable parade of people setting out from the camp in rickety wagons, taking their places among stacks of raw timber, heavy hoes, and woven fishing nets, everything required to tame the wild ground, clear the rivers of fish, and build new villages from nothing. As the labor carts rolled out, a dense line of merchants tried to squeeze their way in, eager to unload their wares, fulfill the strict supply contracts signed with the crown of Yarzat, and claim their coveted coin.

Taking a deep breath of the crisp, biting air, Vilon peered down the highway to see just how long the line was to get inside.

It was, as a matter of fact, a nightmare.

Carts were being checked inside and out with agonizing slow-footed precision. Coarse wool blankets covering heavy crates were torn open without a shred of care, and iron-bound boxes were pried apart for inspection. In some cases, Vilon watched as the guardsmen casually pocketed small items directly from the merchants’ hands. He assumed they were simple bribes until the line finally surged forward, bringing them close enough to take a proper look at the guards equipment.

They had stood waiting in the freezing wind for the better part of half an hour when the final grain cart ahead of them creaked its wheels into the shadows of the wooden gatehouse.

Standing at the entrance was a thoroughly bored-looking guard. He looked up and down at the merchant leading the caravan as if the fat man had personally committed a grave capital crime against his mother. The soldier threw a narrow, yellow-eyed glare at him, or rather, at the merchant’s master, who had bothered to ride to the front, likely because it was the only portion of the long journey where his self-important presence was actually required.

"Looking to drop wares?" the guard grunted. He wore a heavy iron hauberk, but his kettle-helm hung uselessly down his back, suspended by a grease-stained leather strap around his neck.

"Yes, I would like that honor," the merchant replied, his soft hands fidgeting nervously around the strings of his coin pouch, clearly debating whether a silver piece might grease the wheels of his entry. "My contract requires me to deliver these provisions by month’s end."

"Does it? Well, good for fucking you," the soldier muttered, spitting a dark stream of leaf-sap into the mud.He raised an highbrow "I trust you brought the parchment with you? Or am I meant to take your pretty face as gospel?"

A rolled piece of paper, white as winter snow and bearing some crimson wax seal at the end , materialized instantly in the merchant’s soft hand.

The soldier snatched it, barely looking at the text before turning on his heel toward a small wooden shack built into the palisade. "Oi, Arthia! Get your ink-stained arse out here! We got another one!"

A moment later, a man stepped out of the shadow of the shack. This one was clearly no soldier; he slouched heavily, his wool robes stained with dark splotches, and he took the document into his thin fingers with a meekness that Vilon didn’t think possible in a camp ruled by the sword.

The clerk flipped the parchment over, squinting at both sides, after he was satisfied he nodded."The sigil is valid’’ he muttered with a cough, before his finger began to trace the neat script, listing the manifest aloud. ’’Thirty-six sacks of grain... eighty-nine sacks of barley... sixty sacks of processed oats... thirty pounds of salted jerky-meat..." He flipped the page back over, pausing as he realized his thumb was entirely blackened with charcoal ink. "And, ah... finally, five pounds of dried mutton."

"Well, shit. A big one, then," the first soldier muttered, letting out a yawn. He turned his head toward two other guardsmen who were currently dallying on the side of the path, tossing dice against a timber post. "Come now, you lazy bastards, you heard the clerk! Move your heavy arses!"

The soldiers got to work quick enough.They went checking every inch and speck of dust in the caravan, as if that merchant owed them poney, plunging iron rods deep into the grain sacks to ensure no contraband was hidden beneath the food. Five minutes of grunting and tearing later, the senior guardsman stepped back and gave a short, curt nod.

The soldier grunted, a flicker of disappointment crossing his rugged features as if he had actively hoped to find a crate of smuggled blades to confiscate. Perhaps then there would be a bonus for him.

He snatched the parchment back from the ink-stained clerk, thrusting it into the merchant’s hand, before fixing his hard, yellowed eyes on the fat man’s face.

"Pass through," the guard growled. "Keep to the left lane once you’re inside, and if any of your drivers so much as touch a single supply crate before the quartermaster counts them, I’ll personally have their hands pinned to the timber of the gatehouse. Inside, the weight will be checked to the ounce. When you’re done unloading, ask around for the notary. He’ll draw up your receipt. You take that paper to the treasury in the capital, and only then do you get your bloody coin. Understood?"

"Perfectly, perfectly," the merchant squeaked, nodding until his double chin pressed against his collar. He was smiling.

Vilon found that creepy somehow. He never seen the fat man smile.

Before the cart could roll, however, the soldier’s cold gaze slowly drifted past the merchant’s shoulder, locking directly onto Vilon. He eyed the clean pommel of the knight’s sword, the sturdy fit of his chainmail, and the quiet, alert posture of the young Owen holding Chestnut’s reins. The surrounding guardsmen shifted their weight,though they were wise enough to keep their hand well well out of the hilt.

"A word of advice for you and your boy, merchant," the guard said, his voice dropping into a low, menacing rasp. "Keep your steel firmly sheathed while you walk these lanes. If there’s trouble, if some desperate Oizenian thief tries to cut your purse or slip a knife between your ribs, you do not draw. You run and you find a man wearing this hauberk. If any of our patrols catch a man with drawn steel inside the camp, he is dragged out, beaten until his bones rattle, and fined every scrap of silver to his name

And that’s if we’re in a particularly festive mood."

The soldier slowly turned his head, making a lazy, deliberate nudge of his chin toward the dark treeline just beyond the camp’s eastern palisade.

Vilon followed his gaze and found out what would happen if they were not in a merciful mood.

Hanging from the sturdy boughs of the great winter oaks were half a dozen bloated, rotting bodies. They swayed gently in the freezing wind, their tattered clothes fluttering like funeral shrouds, their gray skin picked raw by a black parliament of crows that circled and shrieked in the dimming sky.

"Most of times we are not, usually when there is no much sivler to take" the guard added dryly, turning back to look Vilon dead in the eye, "So we relish in letting the birds have their supper. You understand me?"

Vilon kept his face entirely expressionless, his hand resting nowhere near his sword belt.

The merchant offered a single, slow nod of his head. "I understand. The law is the law."

" Good. We had nasty incidents in the east, so now we got to play fierce with the the lot of you.Right then," the soldier grunted, dismissing all of them with a careless wave of his hand as he were the lord of the land. He spat another dark stream of sap into the freezing mud to his feet. "Now fuck off. I’ve got half of Yarzat trying to squeeze through this gate today, more crowded than a whore’s bed.’’

They said nothing else as the cart rolled in the gate.

The guard turned toward them then, and with a voice more urgent than any of them could have believed he shouted:’’And talking of whores !Hands off them , trust me you don’t want to get what they can give’’ And with that he turned around and spoke no more.