Vol 8, Chapter 16

◆ Some Time Ago, First Duchy, First Duke POV ◆


The Black Castle, nicknamed Dragon's, stood proudly atop the ridge that separated the Kingdom's lands from the outer, dead sea.

Once, it had been gray, like the surrounding cliffs, but dragonfire had melted its sharp edges and coated it in soot. No mortal could climb those cliffs, where every crevice and ledge had become smooth as glass. Not even the nimblest fingers could find a hold, nor could the strongest hands drive an ice axe into rock hardened and glazed by dragonfire.

A long, winding path led to the summit, the route by which the servants brought all necessities. The journey was harsh even in fair weather: narrow bridges, even narrower trails, and a ceaseless wind that cut through flesh both in summer and in winter.

Even in dry summers, men sometimes slipped to their deaths, painting the black cliffs with their blood. And what of the days when the weather turned against them? Every spring, hundreds of servant corpses were gathered from the foot of the Dragon Cliffs.

Today, the weather did not favor the servants. The last days of autumn were drenched in rain, and here in the north, rain turned all too easily to snow…

Dressed in peasant rags, a servant trudged along the winding trail. The howling wind drove wet snow into his face, clinging to his clothes and to the heavy iron chest strapped to his back. Securely enchanted, it guaranteed the safety of its contents even if it plummeted to the foot of the cliffs. Even if this servant could not deliver it... another would.

The unbearable weight pressed down on his shoulders. A sturdy lock clanged against the iron lid of the chest, ensuring that no servant could steal anything along the way. Alas, rampant theft was the most glaring plague of the First Duchy; the second plague was poverty. Not the poverty of the lord or his vassals (for they were astronomically wealthy), but of the common folk.

The servant stepped carefully on the snow-packed trail. The rag-wrapped feet were soaked through, his legs frozen so numb he no longer felt them. Any other lord would have thought it a disgrace for his castle servants to look like beggarly peasants, but not the First Duke. He reasoned that since the servants' clothes were always ruined anyway from falling thousands of meters to their deaths, it was pointless to spend money on them.

Another step… and the slush slid out from underfoot. The servant flailed his arms, but the crushing burden gave him no chance to save himself. With a cry, he fell, leaving only his footprints behind.

The long fall ended in a brutal landing.

The wine inside the enchanted chest was unharmed.

The bloodied load would be torn from the remains, hastily wiped down with a rag, and handed to the next doomed man, no different from the last… except in luck, for despite the weather, he would reach the summit. There he would deliver the chest to better-dressed servants. The wine would be tasted and then served to the lord, who stood before a stained-glass window overlooking all his lands.

The fragile goblet looked out of place in his hand, more like a bear's paw. Draining the wine in one gulp, the Duke passed the glass to a kneeling servant and burped contentedly.

The last days of autumn were passing. Here, at the edge of the world, he felt completely secure. The Dragon Castle had been built to be unassailable: at its back lay the dead sea, at its front, sheer height. No army could storm it; the only safe way to reach it was by griffon.

But even if enemies came by air, what could a few dozen riders accomplish? Even if every lord in the kingdom sent forth their griffons, they would not number more than several hundred, and a good third of those belonged to the First Duke. The lord knew well that in his ancestral castle, only flying beasts posed a true threat, and so he spared no expense against them. The castle's many towers bristled with ballistae and heavy bolt-throwers, and its magical shield could withstand even a raid of mages.

Thus, the Duke was utterly at ease about his safety.

Perhaps he would have understood that his sense of safety was nothing but an illusion, had he known that only a few hundred kilometers away, within a single week, a mountain much like his would be turned into a heap of smoking ruins. And even if a castle had crowned its summit, it would have made little difference.

But for now, workers in Reikland merely bored their tunnels; a demon holed up in a tavern drained its alcohol stores; and the ritual circle to channel the energy of a volatile core explosion had yet to be laid.

Even so, something still troubled the Duke.

Over his lands hung a spirit of hopelessness.
Until now, every time his army had marched, it returned laden with trophies. Loyal vassals gained new lands. Workshops and fields gained new workers. Those who had failed to flee, or who thought nothing would change with a new lord, quickly were learning the difference between being a peasant in the First Duchy and being one anywhere else.

New resources brought a steady flow of coin into the treasury. The slow but relentless machine fed itself. Yet for the first time, the human wave broke against a chain of fortresses and rolled back in vain.

The flower of knighthood burned in the forest. Trained soldiers perished without ever seeing the enemy's face. Even the support of his nephew, the crowned King, could not help. The magical blight, gifted by the King himself, harmed the Duke's own forces more than it ever hurt the enemy.

The assault collapsed. For the first time, the Duke could not simply gather his strength and be certain that numbers alone would sweep all aside. Perhaps, had it been another lord, he might have decided it was time to change tactics: to begin choosing knights for skill rather than loyalty, to train the men better, to equip them more thoroughly… perhaps even grant a measure of freedom to the peasants, who in the First Duchy were called by no other name than "serfs."

But no. The First Duke was not a flexible man. If he took up a cause, he pursued it to the end, even if that cause meant smashing his forehead against a wall.

He was not a fool. He understood that he had already suffered such losses that retreat would be the rational choice. But he also knew that retreat would show weakness, and weakness none would forgive.

For decades he had expanded his duchy, conquering neighboring lands. How many vassals were truly loyal to him, and how many only pretended? How many peasants were willing to labor obediently on his lands, and how many secretly dreamed of rebellion?

He did not know. No one knew, not even the peasants themselves, for even speaking of such things led inevitably to the gallows.

Though his lands had always been the most peaceful in the kingdom, the Duke knew full well the price of that peace. Every month the guards executed hundreds of "troublemakers." He did not care how many of those had truly been agitators and how many had been hanged on false accusations. A sticky fear stood at his back, forcing him to drive the guard to work ever harder. Thus, despite late autumn, the trees of the valleys bore human fruit.

A row of granaries had been struck by black mold, yet the winter campaign demanded grain. Foragers gathered it from across the Duchy, forcing entire towns to go hungry.

Against this backdrop of hardship, recruitment into the army went surprisingly well… but the number of laborers dwindled with every passing day. The economy of the First Duchy rested on those hands that nightly extracted timber, coal, precious stones, and metals. Without a constant flow of resources, he could go bankrupt. Worse still, the Duke understood that his enemy's population was far smaller, which meant that even a complete and bloodless victory would not solve his problems.

He needed new serfs. A great many new peasants.

Fortunately, there was one man ready to help.

"My lord, the moneylender Avraam has arrived," a servant announced with a deep bow.

"Let him in," the Duke growled.

He disliked the white-haired, as did any aristocrat, but still… More Hardans lived in his Duchy than in all the rest of the kingdom combined. In lands where coin rang louder than bloodlines, the Hardans thrived like worms in rotting wood.

"How many people are you ready to sell me?" the Duke barked as soon as the elderly Hardan crossed his threshold. The ruler had no desire to waste time on pleasantries with this wealth-swollen churl.

"I can offer you nearly ten thousand souls," the white-haired man bowed and smiled sweetly.

Half an hour of bargaining later, the deal was signed.

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◆ First Duchy, Len POV ◆

Len's hands were completely numb. No surprise, bound tightly as they were behind his back. Each time the cart jolted over a bump, someone's elbow drove into his side, striking his kidney painfully. and the crowding left him no chance even to turn and see which companion to thank.

The open wagon carried him with a dozen others toward the border of the First Duchy. A horse, thin as death, dragged itself along, barely able to haul the load over the frozen ground.

The cart stopped three times, always for the same reason: patrols.

Presented with a sealed writ and a purely symbolic bribe, they let the wagon pass deeper into the Duke's lands.

Beggar villages gave way to wastelands, wolves howled along the roadside, and even the town… Len did not recognize it at first. His standards had risen sharply of late, and in his eyes this "town" looked more like a village. Brick houses had been partly dismantled, others rebuilt to cram in more people. Broken brick and shattered tiles crunched under the cart wheels, and no one bothered to clear them from the road. Desolation reigned everywhere.

"Unload. We're here," the driver said, heading toward the only decent house, where the overseer had apparently settled.

Len was not given a chance to look. The guards, greasy and fat, their chainmail bulging on swollen sides, prodded him and the others with their spears, driving them quickly toward the forge… just as shabby and rundown as everything else around.

One by one the prisoners were dragged inside. A pained cry followed each.

Then came his turn. Pig-like guards seized him under the arms and hauled him into the building.

Len couldn't help clicking his tongue. Smiths were valued everywhere. Strong and broad, they commanded respect in any community, their word just a little below that of a village elder. But this smith… this smith was the most pitiful he had ever seen.
Skin sagged over bones rather than covering muscle, but worst of all was the look in his eyes—utterly indifferent to all. Dull, fish-like eyes, in which even the fire of the forge failed to reflect.

What Len saw shocked him so much that he did not even notice the hot metal searing into his forehead. His jaw locked in pain, but he held back the scream.

"Next," the smith said with the same lifeless tone, setting the tool into the coals and pressing on the bellows.

"Hold up," one of the guards grunted. "I don't like that he didn't scream. Maybe burn him again?"

"So what? Are you the lord here? We're fed for the brand, not the cries. Next."

The guard shifted his fatty jaw, displeased, but nodded. In the First Duchy it was common practice to do one's work halfheartedly. Had he insisted, no one would have understood him anyway.

Even the guard himself did not know why he suddenly wanted to put in the extra effort. Was it his foul mood, or was it something about this particular serf he disliked?

Either way, the branded man was tossed into the pen with the rest. A deep pit covered with an iron grate overhead… but he did not remain there long.

Barely had Len finished rubbing at his sore spots when a commanding voice ordered him out.

Overseers had come to select fresh meat.

He was quickly separated from his companions. The authorities knew well that the fewer familiar faces among the newcomers, the fewer problems. No one wanted to allow even the chance of acquaintances uniting.

Another brand, this one on his arm to mark his assigned place of labor, and Len was tied to a long rope trailing behind a horse.

The task of patrols was not only to catch runaway workers but also to deliver them to their workplaces. Grim faces, skeletal nags.

The convoy moved slowly, yet even so Len struggled to keep pace. If he stumbled, the horse simply dragged him along the ground, and the rider did not always stop immediately, savoring his suffering.

There was no strength or time to look around. It took him a while to realize a simple fact: they were driving him back, almost to the border itself. The whole journey he had suffered in the cart, he now had to make again… and this time he realized that the cart had been relatively comfortable! Why hadn't they just unloaded him there in the first place? Why drag him back and forth?

It was senseless. Irrational. Merciless.

Later he understood that this was the norm in the First Duchy.

Deep into the night, legs numb with exhaustion, he collapsed onto the straw-covered floor of a barracks and fell asleep.

So began Len's first days as a serf.

"Get up, man. What's your name? I'm Dimitry, and I've been told to keep an eye on you."

Len struggled to open his eyes. The brands on his forehead and shoulder still burned like fire, and the straw dug painfully into his hands. The man waking him had hollow eyes and arms dried to sticks. It was hard to say how old he was; he could just as easily have been thirty as fifty.

"Up, up. I know you're tired, but it's time for work. Fair warning, if you get any thoughts of running, best give them up right now."

"Why's that?" Len asked, though he had no intention of fleeing.

"Because if you screw up, I get punished too. So… don't drag me down."

Punishing the innocent, then. That was how the Duke's exploiters bound workers together, setting them against each other, forcing them to labor while preventing them from uniting against the ruling class. Disgusting, yet effective. He would remember it.

Len rose, finally able to take in the barracks. Even in the dim half-light of morning, the gaps riddling the structure were clearly visible. And what kind of structure was this, anyway? Logs and posts still caked with earth, roughly nailed together; splintered planks covered in moss, likely once part of a fence. In short, the dwelling was patched together from whatever happened to be at hand.

Several families lived inside at once. There was almost no furniture, only stumps serving as chairs. People ate right off the floor. Even the straw that had seemed soft and clean yesterday turned out not to be so at all. It seemed he already had lice.

Scratching at his short hair, he followed his new companion. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but Dimitry explained that food would be brought directly to the workplace.

"What workplace?"

"Here in Zhelezovka, there's only one kind of work: cutting wood and hauling it. Nothing else since ancient times. Don't worry, you're actually lucky. Soon you'll understand why."

A trickle of workers was already flowing out of the village. To Len's surprise, he saw no overseers. He had expected people to be driven to work by force, but… they went voluntarily.

Their eyes were lifeless, resigned, but he already knew how to fight that.

For nearly half an hour the crowd trudged toward the worksite, passing kilometers of stumps jutting from the earth. No one had even bothered to pull them out. Charred-looking stumps, as if scorched, littered the horizon.

Irrational. The soil here might not be the most fertile, but to leave it entirely unused felt sacrilegious. Yet apparently only he thought so. When he asked Dimitry about it, the man only shrugged.

"You'd want to uproot them too? Who needs that, it's hard work and no one feeds you for it. And sowing or planting gardens on our own, it's forbidden."

At last they reached the still-standing trunks, their bark gleaming dully in the sun.

"Blackwood. Ironwood!" Dimitry announced with a pride Len could not understand. "The rich pay gold for junk made out of it: writing desks, chopping blocks for meat!"

Len doubted the rich were splitting meat on it, but his new companion wasn't the least embarrassed by his own nonsense. To him, "meat" and "writing desk" were both markers of unthinkable wealth.

The woodcutters picked up their rusty tools with dull resignation. They had been left scattered all over the clearing in the open, not even gathered in a pile. Clearly abandoned at the end of yesterday's shift. Such negligence toward one's tools made Len tremble with indignation, but the woodcutters paid him no heed. They set to work in silence, sluggish and lazy, like drowsy flies.

At the sight of an axe with a clump of turf frozen to its head, Len's spirits rose… weapon! But then fell. They had been given weapons, and yet, though there was no overseer in sight, they still worked. Why?

Right now they could just leave. Even if a patrol caught them, there were dozens working here, while a patrol might not even number five guards. Yes, the guards had real weapons and chainmail, but could that really save them from a woodcutter's axe?

Strange, incomprehensible. He needed to observe, to understand, and to make a plan. Perhaps it wasn't as simple as it seemed.

Len hefted a rusty axe and brought it down on the nearest tree. True to its name, it numbed his arm at once, as though he'd struck iron. The trunk bore only a tiny notch.

Dimitry said the quota was two trees a day per man: fell them, strip the branches, load and haul them nearly ten kilometers to the depot. Fail, and you went without a proper ration.

Yet to fell even one was grueling work for an ordinary man.

But Len had never shied from physical labor. Strike! And again!

"You're working too well. Stop it, or there'll be trouble," Dimitry fretted after half an hour.

"Aren't we supposed to meet the norm?"

"If we meet the norm, they'll just raise it. Don't hope for a full ration, that's a fairy tale."

Len didn't even think of lowering the axe, though his arms were already numb. Everything around him felt like a strange experiment. No one here worked at full strength. No one even tried. It was as if the people had been trained, conditioned to work poorly.

But Len wasn't about to lower his arms, even if everyone else had.

He would show them that a proper ration wasn't a fairy tale. He would show them that labor could change the world. This would be his first step.

Only three hours later, after a short meal of bread and water brought to the clearing by grimy boys, Len's tree crashed to the ground. The first to fall that day.

"Oh, oh," Dimitry sighed. "I told you to take a rest… What if someone notices?"

"Who would notice?"

"The overseer."

This struck Len as odd, but when the overseer arrived, it grew stranger still. His bloated bulk equaled three gaunt woodcutters, and he moved about on a cart drawn by an ox. No guards accompanied him; even Len could have killed this swine in an instant. And yet, every woodcutter dropped their saws and axes at once and fell to their knees. Fear thickened over the clearing.

"Whose charge is this one?" The overseer pointed at Len.

Dimitry hesitantly raised his hand.

"A lash for failing to explain things properly."

"And you…" he turned to the prisoner, who kept working regardless. "What's your name?"

"Len," he answered curtly.

"Listen carefully. I'll explain how things work here only once. I won't repeat myself, so take it to heart. Out of my boundless kindness, I not only let you avoid meeting your quota, I even feed those who don't meet it a whole half of the ration you're owed. Under any other overseer you'd all have starved to death by now, so be grateful and don't stick your noses where they don't belong. Where the other half of the rations go, that's none of your concern, understand? Even if you fell ten trees, you won't earn my special favor or a full ration—they're reserved for others. Keep your head down. Don't stand out. Don't get in the way of important men like me doing our business, and we'll get along. You leave me alone, I leave you alone. Did I make myself clear?"

Len glanced around. Seeing nothing in the eyes of the others but indifference and fear, he nodded. Too early yet to stand against the hog.

"Good. Now a simple question. You were brought here with your family… how many in it?"

"There must be some mistake…" The question threw Len off.

"Remember this, slave: I never make mistakes. Now, how many?"

And suddenly he understood. He saw how it worked.

"My family is very large—six people in all… and they are all young children, too small to work."

The overseer wheezed a laugh, like the grunting of a boar.

"Smart boy. Took these dullards half an hour each to figure it out! But six is too many, it'll raise suspicion. Say five. Remember it well: five! Think up names for them. And remember this too—don't cause me trouble, and I won't cause you any. For now, go rest. Your workday is over. Others will haul away the tree you felled." The overseer spoke almost tenderly, as if delighted by the serf's quick wits, ready to show him favor.

But Len instantly saw through the ploy. By offering praise, the fat tempter was offering him a privilege: the privilege of dumping his labor on others. He hadn't even finished trimming the branches, and the tree still had to be delivered to the depot to count for even half a quota. Would those others be glad for extra work? This guise of approval was meant to turn the group against him.

"Thank you," he said briefly, and the overseer, chuckling, left.

Len raised his axe again and returned to his work. Even when he finished with his own tree, he moved to one that was only half-cut by his companion.

"Why?" Dimitry asked, astonished.

"Together we'll finish fastg'er," Len answered simply.

Dimitry shook his head, but did not protest. On the contrary, he swung his axe with more vigor, as if the help of another man had awakened a shred of dormant conscience in him. And when the second tree fell, he wasn't surprised to see Len press on, axe in hand, heading to help another.

For Len would not retreat. He needed to win these people's trust. That was the task Lord Condor had given him.

All for the sake of revolution.