landbeastnovel Chapter 122: The Mud in the Willow Grove and the Flesh and Blood Within the High Walls
Chapter 122: The Mud in the Willow Grove and the Flesh and Blood Within the High Walls
A month has passed since the collapse of Pit No. 5 in the Liulin mining area, but the acid rain in the fir forest shows no sign of stopping.
William Charlton stands on a muddy mining pier.
His black leather armor had long been stained a dark yellow by rain and coal dust. His left hand rested on the hilt of his sword, while his right hand took a rough parchment scroll recording the production of pig iron from a soldier of the Iron Oath Legion.
He raised his head and looked at the muddy ground not far away.
There, an out-of-control riot is brewing.
Old Muldur, his sternum broken, lay in the cabin coughing up bloody phlegm. Without the old dog's restraint, and with Tywin Lannister bringing forward the delivery of pig iron and ore by a month, the intense, unpaid labor had brought the eight hundred refugees to the brink of collapse.
In the middle of the muddy ground, fourteen-year-old John Mudd was surrounded by a dozen or so refugees holding pickaxes.
John drew his father's short sword from his waist and stared at the scarred miner who had led the riot. But John's hand was trembling.
"Get out of the way! Do you want to be hanged?!"
Little John roared hoarsely, trying to use the lord's authority to force the other party to back down.
"The old lord is dying, what's a brat compared to him!"
The scarred miner gripped the wooden handle of his pickaxe tightly, his eyes bloodshot.
"They don't even give us enough wheat porridge to drink every day, and they make us dig for an extra four hours. We might as well die together!"
The surrounding refugees slowly approached Little John.
William strode forward, wading through the mud.
Thirty Iron Oath soldiers drew their spears, their synchronized footsteps pounding the muddy ground like heavy hammer blows. Hearing the scraping of armor plates, the refugees shrank back.
William walked over to John.
He didn't look at the boy who was pale with fright, but instead reached out and pressed down on the trembling dagger in Little John's hand.
"Killing people with swords is the stupidest thing you can do."
William's voice wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the dead silence of the muddy ground.
He turned around, his gray eyes coldly sweeping over the scarred miner who was leading the group, and the hundreds of resentful vagrants behind him.
William did not draw his sword; instead, he took out the Blue Fork Code of Labor, drafted by the Maester of Ilion, from his pocket.
"Book III, Article 6 of the Code."
William's voice sounded like he was checking accounts.
"Those who gather to resist forced labor will be punished with lifelong mining slavery. However, those who actively report and arrest the ringleaders of the disturbance..."
William paused, his gaze sweeping across the men behind the scarred miner with a sharp, piercing look.
"A ten-day exemption from military service will be granted. The ringleader of the rebellion will be rewarded with all of his monthly food rations."
"If you hand him over to me, tonight, whoever catches him will have two pieces of smoked meat in their bowl."
The air seemed to freeze at that moment.
William did not explain the rules.
The scarred miner froze for a moment. Before he could turn around and scold his companion behind him, he was hit hard on the back of the head with a pickaxe.
"Bang!"
The dull thud of bones breaking.
The scarred miner didn't even have time to scream before he collapsed headfirst into the mud.
The one who knocked him down was a gaunt refugee who had just been standing next to him, shouting that he would fight to the death.
"Sir! I smashed it! He resisted labor, I smashed him to death!"
The gaunt refugee stepped over the scarred man's corpse, threw away his pickaxe, and frantically gestured with his hands in the mud, his eyes filled with extreme fanaticism for ten days of exemption from corvée labor and two pieces of smoked meat.
"Write down my name! Give me his quota!"
The refugees who had been gathered together preparing for a riot dispersed like the receding tide, their eyes filled with wariness and malicious scheming.
They were no longer united oppressors; they had become hyenas staring at each other's throats.
John stared blankly at the body lying in the mud, a chill running down his spine. He turned to look at William.
"See that, little John?"
William shoved the law code back into his arms, his voice cold and hard as iron.
"As long as you have the power to distribute meat to them, you don't even need to lift a finger."
He turned his head and waved to the vagrant who had killed his companion.
"Throw the body into the acid mud pit."
William gave instructions to his adjutant behind him.
"Record ten days of exemption from military service for this person, and give him meat."
Half a day later.
William rode back to the Greystone Tower at the Blue Fork River headquarters, carrying pig iron from the Willow Grove mine.
As soon as he reached the bottom of the stone tower, he smelled a pungent, sour, and rotten odor that was ten times stronger than that of the willow grove.
The smell was coming from the deepest part of the inner fortress, from the newly built, towering wall.
The iron gate of the high wall was half-closed.
That was an absolute forbidden zone on the Blue Fork River; only Poliver and the mute servant who delivered meals were allowed inside. It was where the raw silver was refined.
William peeked through the crack in the door and saw Gareth, the White Knight, in the medical tent.
Gareth never normally sets foot in the inner fortress, but today he is kneeling on the brick floor inside the high walls, holding a bowl of murky liquid mixed with herbs.
Lying in front of Gareth was an old soldier who had lost a leg.
The veteran's chest heaved violently like a broken bellows, and with each cough, he would spit out a glob of black phlegm streaked with dark red blood.
Not far from the veteran, several huge earthenware jars were churning with a pungent, yellowish-green toxic fumes.
In order to make up for the money that had been diverted from the previous shipment, Tywin forced Bluefork to increase the purity of its silver by half a percent.
Pollifer had no choice but to double the concentration of the acid solution inside the high walls and require the veterans to work an extra four hours each day.
The toxic fumes from the strong acid are irreversibly corroding the lungs of these disabled veterans.
"Drink it. It will stop the pain."
Gareth held the bowl to the veteran's lips, his eyes red-rimmed.
"It's no use, Sir Knight."
The old soldier pushed away the medicine bowl, still clutching a piece of freshly washed silver residue in his only remaining hand.
He looked at Gareth, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Don't bother. Steward Polliff said that as long as we die inside this wall and don't reveal what's going on inside, the pensions and rent-free fields in the outer city will be given to my two growing sons."
The veteran coughed up another mouthful of blood, which stained the silver residue.
"With my disabled body, I'd be a useless beggar anyway. But to trade my rotten lungs for my son's decades of food and drink, it's a worthwhile deal."
In a corner of the high wall, the down-on-his-luck scholar, who had been tricked from Pentos, was wearing a clean robe, sitting at a wooden table drinking red wine, and sketching the structure of a water-powered windmill on a huge parchment with a quill pen.
"The blueprints will take another seven days to be finalized."
The scholar reported to his adjutant beside him.
"Tell Steward Pollifer to let these veterans hold on for another seven days. Too many can't die in those seven days, otherwise production will stop before the waterwheel is finished."
William silently observed everything inside the door. He withdrew his gaze, closed the heavy iron door, and completely shut out the coughing and smell of medicine behind the wall.
He walked up the stone steps to the study on the second floor.
At the mahogany table, Otto was looking down at a smuggled secret letter sent from Seagull Town.
William stepped forward and placed the mud-stained "Brief Report on the Suppression and Production of the Willow Grove Mining Area" on the left side of the table.
Almost simultaneously, Pollifer walked over from the other side and placed a "Status of Veterans' Casualties and Compensation Inside the High Walls" on the right side of the table.
Otto didn't look up; he picked up his quill pen and quickly wrote a line on William's report.
"Promote the vagrant who killed his companion to be the foreman."
Otto's tone was cold and mechanical; it was a reward for a traitor from the bottom rungs of society.
Then, the quill pen moved to the list of the dead on the right. Otto glanced at the numbers of those who had died from ruptured lungs, and without hesitation, crossed them out.
"Delay the distribution of the land to the families of the deceased for a year. Tell Pollifer to pick five more seriously ill refugees from the camp and throw them into the high wall to fill the gap. The acid washing pool must not be stopped for a moment."