Chapter 1349: Accursed lands(2)

The half-formed image Vilon had painted in his mind outside the palisade did not relent one bit once he crossed the threshold.

He had estimated there would be thousands packed inside, and indeed, thousands there were, a dense, roiling sea of displaced humanity.

Wherever he turned his eyes, he saw bodies set to backbreaking tasks or trudging through the gray muck to begin their labor. He passed a tight ring of old women and small, solemn-faced children sitting on upturned crates, their fingers flying as they wove thick river reeds and willow branches into sturdy baskets and storage chests.

Further down the lane, a crew of men was actively gutting and butchering fresh game brought in from Hunters, maybe from the sorrounding villages.

They strung rows of pale fish and dark strips of venison over smoldering fire pits, letting the thick hickory smoke preserve the meat. Nearby, the dark, thick blood from the butchery was being carefully drained into wide wooden basins, while giant iron cauldrons of cracked grain boiled merrily to the side.

Vilon’s stomach gave a quiet rumble; someone in this wretched camp was going to have a feast of blood sausage tonight. He wouldn’t have shied away from a link of it himself.

The settlement might have indeed passed for a bustling frontier city, if only there were actual buildings in it.

Instead, all Vilon could see were endless rows of canvas tents sprouting from the muddy earth, their heavy wooden poles nailed deep into the heart of the soil, gently swaying and snapping under the wind’s bitter blows.

There were far more people than there were shelters; the knight quickly calculated that they must be cramming five, perhaps six souls to a single drafty tent. The smell alone, Vilon assumed, must be hell at midnight, though the place could hardly be called anything else but that.

Every two steps, Vilon spun around to ensure he hadn’t distanced himself from the caravan. In this choked mayhem, losing your companions for a single minute meant hours of labor trying to find them again.

Deciding against his saddle, he had Owen ride Chestnut while he simply walked on foot, keeping a hand on the wooden frame of the merchant’s cart. As he trudged through the muck, the surrounding crowd watched him pass.

Cold, hollow eyes trailed across the polished steel of his bhaulberk mail,the fine pommel of his sword, and the painted face of his shield.

A few desperately hungry stares even lingered on the thick, muscled flanks of Chestnut.

Across the muddy road, grim-faced guardsmen patrolled in pairs. In some of the wider intersections, Vilon even spotted the distinctive, disciplined black and white of the legionaries, standing like solid rocks in a rushing river of desperate refugees. He noticed four of them diving in a sea of people.

Somewhere in that crowd shrill scream pierced the air. It was a woman’s voice, raw and terrified, echoing from a nearby alleyway of tents.

Vilon’s hand instinctively leaped to the hilt of his sword, his fingers wrapping around the leather grip before the gate guard’s warning flashed through his mind. The branch.

He forced his hand to trail back down to his side, letting the blade rest. He had no desire to swing from an oak bough before he even reached the tourney.

It proved to be the right choice. A minute later, a squad of burly guardsmen came marching down the lane, dragging two bruised and bleeding men past the cart toward the center of the camp taking them off the hands of two Black Stripes, who were more than content to let them have them.

Vilon looked up, and his chest tightened a tad, as he saw what awaited them. Standing in the central plaza was a massive wooden gallows, from which a dozen fresh, bloated bodies already hung, their limp feet dangling over the mud. Two more ropes were quickly thrown over the crossbeam. A minute later the two newcomers were hoisted up without say or prayer. Nearby, a pair of guards used a pole to nudge a rotting carcass into a cart, making room for the fresh arrivals.

To Vilon’s horror, the crowd of refugees watching the spectacle let out a ragged, bloodthirsty cheer. No one likes a rapist, I suppose, Vilon thought grimly.

Many of these people had brought their wives and daughters into this lawless camp; swift, brutal justice was the only thing keeping the tents from descending into absolute savagery.

Still, the casual cruelty of it made a cold lump of disgust and bile rise in Vilon’s throat. He glanced up at Owen, who looked pale, his knuckles white on Chestnut’s reins. They had only just entered the gates, and already, every instinct told them to turn back and ride.

"Quite nasty, this place, eh?"

The sudden voice made Vilon flinch. He turned his head to see Rosh walking a horse-length behind him, his hood pulled low against the wind, though it indeed tried to pull it back and show his face to everyone.

"I think I’d prefer sleeping up in the branches with the ravens than spending a single night down here," Rosh continued, spitting into the mud. "You spend the day starving and breaking your back for the conquerors, and when you finally crawl back to your tent, you’ve got your fellow desperate bastards trying to slip a knife in your ribs for a crust of bread."

Rosh cast a dark, lingering look toward the smoking cauldrons where the blood sausages were being prepared, his eyes narrowing in disgust. "Honestly, ser... in a place like this, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the meat they’re boiling over those fires didn’t actually come from the forest."

He offered a slow, bloody grin, the missing teeth made him look more like a scavenger than a soldier.

"How can you even joke about that?" Owen spat, his opinion of the man sinking into the freezing mud. He looked as if he might lose his morning meal right over Chestnut’s mane. "It’s disgusting!"

"It’s life," Rosh replied flatly, his tone entirely drained of humor. "Maybe not your life, little bird, pampered as you are, trailing behind a noble knight with your belly full of salt-pork and fresh barley. But it is certainly their life." He jabbed a dirty thumb toward the hollow-eyed crowd shivering around the tents. "And isn’t that a lovely comedy? The conquerors march south, burn their crops, put their villages to the torch, slide iron between their brothers’ ribs, put his cock in their daughter’s cunt, and then, the moment the land is theirs, they throw on their finest velvet and play the loving, benevolent father.Extending an hand with food like a good old shepherd.A good old father."

To punctuate his words, a fat, greasy crow descended with a screech onto the face of one of the not so fresh corpses hanging from the gallows.

With a greedy, wet tug of its beak, the bird ripped a strip of putrid flesh from the dead man’s cheek.

Rosh watched it, his terrible smile returning. "A hard-love father, clearly."

Vilon watched the sellsword, surprised by the sudden, venomous fervor in his tone. He hadn’t expected the cynical bastard to possess anything that he had an opinion on, let alone one that could be so easily roused to anger.

Throughout the long, dusty journey with the caravan, Rosh had been entirely at his ease, spending his days mocking the other guards and his nights spending a small fortune to keep Martha warm in the back of his wagon. Vilon still couldn’t fathom how a simple hired hand had enough coin to purchase the woman’s undivided attention for a whole week.

Martha certainly didn’t sell her favors cheap.

The knight wanted to let the matter drop. They would be parting ways with the caravan soon enough, and there was no sense in starting a petty argument in a camp packed with touchy legionaries. But his young squire had other, more foolish ideas.

"It wasn’t our armies that crossed the border first," Owen spat, his face flushing a bright, defensive red. His eyes narrowed like a hound cornering a boar; Rosh had clearly struck a raw, patriotic nerve. "It was the Prince of Oizen who attacked us. We only defended ourselves. We didn’t ask for this war!"

"Is that the tale they feed you in the north?" Rosh scoffed, turning a mocking gaze on the boy. "Funny thing, then. In all my travels down the southern road, the only devastation I’ve found is here, in the principality of Oizen. Makes a man think, doesn’t it? If the Prince of Oizen was the great wolf who leaped at your throats, how come his sheep are the ones currently dangling from the ropes?"

"If you have a grievance with the politics of the war, take it up with the crownless Prince," Vilon cut in, his voice dropping like an iron bar, instantly silencing Owen before the boy could dig his hole any deeper. He did not want to make trouble here.

"Prince Sorza was the one who joined and called the League, led the host, and lost the field. By all accounts, he brought this ruin down on his own people. If you want someone to blame for the ashes of Oizen, blame him.Or blame Yarzat when you see its king.

I don’t give half a fig.

Just leave us out of this, wherever this goes , it won’t go well.If you want to dig yourself a hole....well I see you already have your shovel and you are already deep enough in it...I am sure any nearby soldier would lend you a hand."

Rosh’s eyes darkened, the mocking light fading from them, leaving behind a cold, dangerous emptiness that would have made Vilon’s hand drift back toward his saddle-scabbard, but he knew better, so he just returned the stare.

So much for not searching for trouble.

"Trust me, ser," Rosh murmured, his voice barely louder than the wind rattling the canvas tents. "If I ever get the chance, I’ll be sure to tell him exactly that.I hope you’ll do the same if It chance to ride past you...."