landbeastnovel Chapter 118: The Stinking Mud at the Ferry Crossing and the Orphan of Pentos
Chapter 118: The Stinking Mud at the Ferry Crossing and the Orphan of Pentos
Little John was curled up in a hammock that reeked of cheap beer and vomit.
His tattered linen clothes, which he had picked up in the Pentos slums, were soaked through by the rain and turned a dirty grayish-black.
Since last night, the regular rocking of the waves has disappeared, replaced by the sound of the water dragging the hull of the boat over the reefs.
"Bang!"
The hatch in the lower deck was kicked open.
A damp, chilly wind, carrying the smell of horse manure and sulfur, filled the narrow cabin.
"Get up. We've reached the shore."
Little John rubbed his eyes and climbed up the wooden ladder onto the deck.
When his feet touched the moss-covered wooden boardwalk, the longing he had held in his heart for half a month was suddenly shattered by the hazy scene before him.
When old Brin found him in that dark alley in Pentos, he told him that his father had become a knight-lord with a fief.
Little John had seen plenty of boasting in the mercenary camp, but he still dreamed of seeing a towering stone castle.
But he saw nothing.
The freezing rain of early summer is as fine as cow's hair.
At the end of the pier was a patch of black mud trampled into a pulp, and deep within the mud stood several crude blast furnaces spewing thick black smoke.
The pungent, sour stench in the air was even more suffocating than the dirtiest sewers in Pentos.
Not far away, hundreds of emaciated civilians were digging in the mud like puppets.
John's lips tightened slightly, and his fingers unconsciously gripped the hem of his tattered linen coat.
He didn't cry out; instead, like a young animal suddenly thrown into an unfamiliar hunting ground, he cautiously surveyed his surroundings.
"Stop looking. This is the Blue Fork River."
Brin's voice came from behind.
John turned his head and saw the old soldier who had shared half a loaf of black bread with him in the cabin just yesterday.
Brin's face was ashen, and his lips were cracked and bleeding. He was not wearing armor; the sleeve of his left arm was empty, severed cleanly at the elbow, and the wound was wrapped with a wad of linen that smelled of herbs and burnt herbs.
"Where's Gavin?"
John blurted it out. He remembered the fat old soldier who always liked to polish his dagger.
Brin didn't answer, but simply nudged John's back with his remaining right hand.
On the pier, a burly man wearing a black leather cloak strode over.
That face, rough and taut like dried leather, bore a resemblance to the image of himself that John had seen in the puddles of the slums, only with an added layer of coldness and the grime of gunpowder smoke.
This was his biological father, John Mudd, the Knight of Willowwood, whom he only vaguely remembered as his back.
Mudd did not hug his son, whom he had not seen for more than a decade.
His gaze passed over the boy's head and landed on Brin's empty sleeve.
Gavin stayed at the docks in Pentos.
Brin reported to the director in a dry voice, as if he were talking about a trivial matter that had nothing to do with him.
"The governor's goldsmith cut open the gold coins at the bottom of the chest and saw the brass base. Gavin was chopped down on the gangplank by more than a dozen scimitars while trying to stop the city guards from charging. I lost an arm and cut the ropes to save the ship."
Only the sound of raindrops hitting the water could be heard on the wooden boardwalk.
Mud's jaw muscles tightened beneath his leather cloak. He extended his calloused right hand and patted Brin's right shoulder heavily.
Then, Mudd slowly lowered his gaze, landing on little John's face, which was covered in mud.
Mudd reached out and crushed John's shoulder with the heel of his hand, the force almost crushing his bones.
"Look closely at this severed hand. Remember Gavin's name."
Mud's voice sounded like scraping on a whetstone.
"Gavin is dead, Brin is ruined. The fact that you're standing on this muddy ground now is something they risked their lives for."
John winced in pain, but he bit his lip and didn't cry out.
The handover on the pier did not pause for a moment because of the severed arms and deaths.
The head steward, Poliffer, led the Iron Oath soldiers to take over the unloading.
Barrels of sealed strong acid waste liquid were sent into the high walls of the inner fortress.
More than forty large, snorting Pentos heavy draft horses were led out of the hold and immediately sent to the Liulin mining area to become ore transport animals that worked day and night.
What puzzled John the most was the group of people who were finally taken off the ship.
There were seven or eight adult men, dressed in rags and with rough hemp ropes tied around their wrists.
Some of them wore tattered scholar's robes, while others even retained traces of the attire of the fallen nobles of Pentos.
They were lured aboard by Polliff's informant with the lie that they would be sent to Westeros to serve as high-ranking staff officers.
When the ship sailed into the deep sea and the deposits handed to them revealed their brass base color, they realized that they had become a group of kidnapped prisoners.
"Liar! Robber!"
A Pentos bankruptcy scholar who understands the Common Tongue roars angrily in the rain.
"You despicable bandits of the Riverlands! I'm reporting you to Flowing City..."
Before he could finish speaking, the Iron Oath soldiers slammed a long spear shaft into the scholar's stomach.
The scholar curled up in the mud in agony, spitting out the second half of his curse along with the acid.
"Give each of them a dry, hard loaf of bread and half a bowl of water."
Pollifer pushed up his brass-rimmed glasses and made a few monotonous strokes.
"Take them to the drill ground."
John was pushed and shoved by his father, following behind the scholars into the muddy bluestone training ground of the inner fortress.
Under a row of simple wooden sheds at the edge of the drill ground, veteran Toren was holding a white ash wood stick, watching the thirty boys sitting in the mud.
The Pentos scholars who had been brought over were pinned to the wooden planks by the soldiers.
"Listen up, literate gentlemen."
Toren stepped forward and tapped the sand table with a stick.
"Your lives now belong to Baron Hohenzollern. Your daily task is to teach these thirty peasants to read, do arithmetic, and understand the flag signals on the battlefield."
The scholar who had just been beaten clutched his stomach, looking desperately at the dark, high walls around him.
"You're dreaming...you bunch of lunatics, do you think you can teach serfs to write with just a few sticks?"
Without wasting words, Toren turned to look at the thirty trembling refugee boys.
"The code has been promulgated. You were chosen from two thousand people."
Toren didn't preach any grand principles; he simply picked up a cloth bag full of coarse black bread from under his feet and threw it heavily onto the muddy ground.
"The adults said: Learn five words a day, and you'll get a piece of bread. If you don't learn them, you won't get any food. If you dare to run away, they'll break your legs and throw you back into Mine No. 5."
The eyes of the thirty boys were fixed on the cloth bag that smelled of wheat, their Adam's apples bobbing involuntarily.
They understood "bread" and "mine".
Little John stood in the rain, watching the displaced boys clumsily scratching at the sand table with twigs, hoping to earn a piece of bread for tomorrow.
That night, late at night.
In a simple wooden hut that had just been built on the edge of the Liulin mining area.
A cold wind blew in through the cracks in the logs.
Old Mulder sat at the rough wooden table, wiping the longsword that had bestowed upon him his knighthood with a coarse cloth.
Little John, wrapped in a slightly oversized dry wool blanket, sat by the brazier, silently watching the flickering embers.
The only sound inside was the soft scratching of a whetstone against metal.
This was the first time the father and son had been alone together since their reunion.
Mude stopped what he was doing.
He raised his head, his gray eyes looking through the dim firelight at the stubborn and uneasy boy.
"Don't you feel like this place isn't even as spacious as the alley where you were begging in Pentos?"
Mudd's voice sounded muffled and hoarse in the quiet cabin.
John didn't speak, but simply clenched the wool blanket covering his knees slightly.
Mude stood up, walked to the wooden window, and pushed open the broken wooden board that was used to block the wind.
The cold night wind swept into the house, causing the charcoal fire in the brazier to flicker.
Looking out the window, several miles away, in the huge Liulin mine, torches were scattered like stars, and the faint sounds of whips cracking and ore-carrying wheels could be heard.
Further away in the Blue Fork Valley, the gray stone tower and several forging furnaces lay dormant in the night like a silent behemoth.
"Look outside."
Mudd pointed to the dark mine.
"Gavin is dead, and Brin is a cripple. They risked their lives to bring you back, not to be a pampered young master."
Mudd turned his head and stared into John's eyes.
"In this muddy land, Lord Otto holds the power of life and death over everyone. And we are the turning wheel in this great mill."
"In Westeros, you either learn how to turn these stones and crush other people's flesh and blood, or you will be ground to dust in this mill like those vagrants below."
As John faced the night wind, he looked out the window at the blast furnace spewing sparks and black smoke. The last trace of confusion slowly faded from the eyes of that wild child from the slums.