Chapter 158: Refugees’ Gathering Point

The weather was getting colder and colder.

When the big sun was high in the sky, the clouds appeared to be hazy and unreal; more and more grayish-yellow streaks appeared in the sky when day was alternating with night. The stars were cold and bright; all kinds of signs indicated that this was going to be a winter that was even colder than the usual.

And it was difficult for the homeless to get through such a winter.

‘Red-Nose Tom’ hugged a bundle of dry wood that had been gathered with great effort, hobbling on his way back to his habitation. The Frost Month’s frigid winds blew from the north, curling past the surrounding sparse forest and low hills to sting his face and rush into his collar, making him feel as if his entire person was soaked in a tub of cold water that was gradually cooling.

He was a youth of merely 17 years of age. According to the laws of Anzu, he was already an adult, yet prolonged malnutrition left him as thin and small as most of his peers. From his physique, it was as if he had yet to be of age; only that ragged and darkening face, as well as those eyes gradually turning dull, could reveal his true age and reveal his terrible living environment.

He could already see the habitation. Though said to be a habitation, in reality, it was just a small, simple, and crude camp located in the forest of the southern borders. It was even a bit of a stretch to call it a camp —— some low and tattered tents and rocks were collected here; a circle of similarly worn-out fences and brambles surrounded them. A small remaining section of the mountain range, extended in the southeast direction from the Tanzan Mine, formed a low blockade here. It barely managed to provide the most basic shelter for the pitiful people hiding out here —— withstanding the freezing winds from the north, making winter come slightly later, and letting the people here live just a little longer.

Tom walked into the camp holding the dry wood; coming into sight were pairs of impassive and listless eyes. There were 26 families gathered here, 102 people. But a few days ago, this number had been 109. Most of them were refugees who escaped from the Bald Eagle territory; a flood that happened there had left these people homeless. The rest came from various Viscount’s territories. They were all peasants who had lost their lands and shelter due to all sorts of reasons.

They wandered to the different cities or towns and were evicted, arrested, killed by the local feudal lords or local wild beasts, or they died from the cold and hunger. The southern borders were barren; it was difficult for most territories to provide for even more people, and to those aristocrats who only knew how to scrape the blood and sweat from their lands and their serfs, any refugee that wandered into their territory was a detestable mouth that needed to eat. Hence, the refugees could ultimately only choose to ‘settle down’ in the wilderness.

Tom found his temporary lodging: it was a shabby small tent —— and this was already considered pretty good circumstances because not every family had a tent. Many people had lost almost all their belongings long ago in the process of exile; they could only sleep in the tree stumps or wind-eroded habitats, passing the days wrapped in ragged clothes or a heap of weeds. And the reason why Tom could still have a small tent to keep out wind and rain was completely because he and his sister still had their curved blade and bow and arrows with them.

The fire before the tent had died out, but it wasn’t night yet, so Tom carried the firewood into the tent. After his eyes adapted to the darkness inside, he saw a pair of bright eyes watching him in the dark.

“Sister.” Tom looked towards the black-haired girl. “I didn’t find mushrooms. I only found this firewood.”

The black-haired girl was in a daze. Only a few seconds later did she suddenly murmur, “The Bomer’s two children have died from starvation.”

“…Oh,” Tom responded softly. He sat down in the dark and only asked several seconds later, “Today… is there food?”

The black-haired girl fell into a daze again. A bad feeling involuntarily rose in Tom’s heart, but a while later, the black-haired girl suddenly moved her upper body, groped for an item, and tossed it over.

It was a fairly small pheasant, and it still carried a fresh metallic scent of blood —— only in this tent that was filled with all sorts of peculiar odors, Tom wasn’t aware of its existence at all.

A puny little pheasant was completely not enough to fill the bellies of the siblings, especially with the premise that they could only eat this one meal a day. However, this still lifted Tom’s spirits —— compared to grilled mushrooms and grilled lichen, meat could allow one to sustain longer in this weather that was getting increasingly colder. He was overjoyed. “You hunted something? We don’t have to go hungry today!”

“Take the hunting knife with you when you go out to remove its feathers,” the black-haired girl said coolly. “Wear it somewhere conspicuous.”

“Mm!” Tom nodded hard, but as he got more and more used to the darkness in the tent, he finally noticed the anomaly with his sister —— she had been lying in the corner in a weird position throughout; her energy when she spoke was also clearly not as usual. Tom leaned forward with a bad hunch and finally saw the bloodstains near his older sister’s shoulder as well as the arm that hung weakly by her side. “Sister, you’re injured?!”

“I was bitten by a stray dog. I injured my tendon.” The girl’s voice finally trembled. “I… can no longer hunt.”

It was as if a bucket of iced water rained down from above him. Tom was instantly cold from head to sole —— unable to hold a knife, unable to draw the bow. The injury on her arm meant that his sister, the only person who could go hunting in the forest, had lost the ability to obtain food, and this concurrently meant that the two of them… already faced certain death.

Everyone was starving; it was impossible for anyone to come help them. To these people who had lost everything, even slight injuries on their limbs or brief periods of losing their ability to labor were fatal threats!

Moreover, people who were bitten by stray dogs got infected very easily, and once she was infected in this situation, it would be impossible to save her.

“I…” Tom gritted his teeth, making up his mind. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring the bow and arrows…”

“Don’t go,” the black-haired girl said in an unyielding tone, her gaze landing on Tom’s legs. “If you go, you won’t return. Going to hunt in the forest is different from collecting firewood nearby!”

Tom wasn’t born a cripple: his leg had been broken by his feudal lord’s knight. It was because that knight had gone to listen to a sermon in the church; the cleric from the Church of the Blood God said that only by personally breaking a man’s leg would his combat skills and courage break through the bottleneck, so the knight broke Tom’s leg without the slightest hesitation. ——Afterwards, he’d compensated them with half a bag of wheat.

“I will set traps,” Tom insisted. “I remember how to differentiate between the trails of bears and wolves. I will bypass…”

“But if you die outside, I will definitely die too.” The black-haired girl stared fixedly at Tom’s eyes. “Go pick mushrooms in the forest. Look for seeds under the tree roots and fruits. If all else fails…”

What could they do if all else failed? She no longer knew.

Tom bit his lips, thinking hard, and finally uttered the thought that he had mulled over for a long time. “We can… approach the feudal lord here…”

“Have you forgotten how everyone was driven away from the Carol territory?” the black-haired girl burst out sternly. “It’s Frost Month now, the month when people no longer farm and it’s hard to hunt. The aristocrat lords would not allow even one more mouth in their territory at this time!”

“Then…” Tom thought again and offered hesitantly, “The mine might need slaves —— the feudal lord of Tanzan Town has a big mine. Even in Frost Month, the mine needs slave laborers, right…?”

“Can you be a slave laborer?” The black-haired girl stared at Tom’s legs. “I can’t work now. Neither can you. Even if they want slaves, they won’t want those like us!”

“How about moving further south? I heard that the south of the White River is the Cecil Clan’s newly pioneered territory. They probably lack all sorts of workers, pioneering such a place… At the least, I can tan[1] leather.”

“Stop thinking about it.” The black-haired girl finally let out a deep exhale, her eyes dull as she leaned back on the already moldy heap of straw. “The aristocrat lords… are all the same…”

The howling wind blew from the north once again, rolling past this bleak and impoverished camp.

Hunger and the cold made people end their only activity for the day. Everyone curled back into their tents or heaps of straws, trying their best to reduce the loss of physical strength and heat through such a method, and in this process, the camp gradually quietened down.

However, outside the campsite, in the slightly denser forest, some moving shadows were gathering.

They brought equipment that were of all variety but also especially sophisticated. There wasn’t any unified symbol on them, and they clustered in groups in the mountain forest, eyes glued to that small settlement through the vegetation and darkness of the night.

Just like hyenas watching their prey in the dark, their eyes were full of greed and hunger.

…

In the feudal lord’s tent in the Cecil territory, Gawain Cecil received Philip’s report.

A refugee gathering point? North of the White River, in the mountain forest east of Tanzan Mine?”

“Yes, Lord.” The young knight nodded and said, “It was supposed to be Sir Byron reporting to you, but he’s currently exploring the ruins in the mountains, so the news came to me.”

Gawain put down the dip pen in his hand. “How big is the scale? Have people been sent to get in touch?”

At the same time, excitement filled his heart. After asking and opening up channels everywhere, the investigators were finally starting to discover those hidden refugee gathering points!”

“The scale isn’t big, about a hundred people, but we might be able to contact other refugee gathering areas through them,” Sir Philip answered. “But our people have yet to interact with them… Because there’s some trouble.”

“Trouble?” Gawain brows knitted together.

“Some armed personnel of unknown background are active near that gathering point, probably a mercenary ‘slave-capturing team’ waiting to strike.” A hint of loathing appeared on Philip’s face. “According to the information sent back, the group’s equipment is of excellent quality, and it is confirmed that Beyonders exist. There might even be one or two spellcasters overseeing things. Only their grades are unknown.”

“Several Beyonders running things?” Gawain was slightly surprised. “The strength of this mercenary team is fairly decent.”

Sir Philip nodded. “Lord, how should we handle this?”

“Of course we… go bring back those residents who ought to be protected by the Cecil Clan.” Gawain Cecil smiled. “With the Tanzan Mine as the east and the various aristocratic territories as the south, the mountainous region, forest, and river are all no man’s land. In this place in the south, all that are unowned belong to the Cecil Clan!”

[1] Tanning – the process of treating skins of animals to produce leather

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