From Londoner To Lord

Kivamus couldn't help but laugh at that vision, while others joined in it as well.

After a moment, when everyone's laughter had calmed down, he looked at Madam Helga. "I held you back because I want you to coordinate with Madam Nerida regarding this. It won't be easy to prepare food for so many villagers within the manor, while maintaining quality and taste in it. But you already have experience preparing food in a large quantity in an inn, so you should be able to help her in that. And you can use the help of any off-duty servants or guards in the preparation of food as well."

"It's not going to be easy, just like you said," Helga replied, "but we will have to manage somehow. I can imagine how good that feast will feel to the villagers, since my family was in exactly the villagers' hopeless situation before we arrived here with you. Having a baron who cares for them is like a Goddess' blessing. So don't worry, Milord, I'll make sure to do it well. Getting enough raw food is always the difficult part. Cooking it for people after that is no trouble at all."

"Good!" Kivamus added, "We also have some cheese and butter which Pydaso has brought for us, so we should also provide some of that to the villagers as well, along with the vegetables."

Duvas interrupted, "But we don't have enough of those to feed all the villagers, my Lord! I understand that those would be good things in a feast - things which most of the villagers rarely get to taste but our remaining cheese and butter would end within a few days if we provided it to everyone."

"No, no," Kivamus interrupted. "I know that we didn't buy that much of it. What I meant is that we can provide a small amount of cheese and butter just for tonight - for the feast." He looked at Madam Helga. "You and Madam Nerida will be making a lot of bread for tonight anyway, so it will be good to provide something to add more flavor to the feast. But, like duvas said, we don't have enough of it and it doesn't come cheap either. So make sure to provide only a small amount of it to everyone."

At Helga's nod, he added, "But you know what, while you should keep the quantities small, you can provide a second helping to the children if they want. It's not something we can provide to the villagers regularly, but this is a feast, so I want everyone to know the taste of those. Especially the children."

Madam Helga gave a warm smile. "Don't worry milord, I will manage it properly so that everyone gets a taste of cheese and butter, while still keeping our food stores intact."

"Perfect!" Kivamus said with a nod. "The villagers have gone through a very bad time in the recent months. So I want to provide them at least a single day of happiness before the harsh winter is upon us."

*******

~ Calubo ~

~ Somewhere inside the forests surrounding Tiranat ~

After a long journey, the group of bandits had finally arrived near Tiranat sometime this morning. Nokozal had kept their two remaining horses for his own use so he wouldn't have to walk much, while the rest of them had to keep trudging through the continuously gathering snow on the road.

The journey had been tiring even before the snow had started on the road, but after that, the weather had turned way too cold on the road and it became exhausting to keep walking. At least Nokozal had allowed them to make a fire whenever they stopped for the night - where they also cooked whatever little prey they caught in the forest as food - since without that fire to heat up their bodies after walking in the snow all day, they might have just frozen on the road.

However, as they came closer to the village, the snowfall had stopped. Or more likely, looking at the dry ground here, snowfall hadn't started here yet, but it wouldn't be long before it did.

Calubo had been cursing the bandits and his useless luck for everything he was going through, but when he got the first look at the village he had lived in for nearly all his life after being away from it for so long, he couldn't help but become emotional at the sight. Although he couldn't see much from where they were hiding in the forest in the north-west of the village, just the sight of those run-down wooden houses was enough to remind him that whatever its flaws, it was home.

He had immediately wanted to run to the village after that, and for a moment he had nearly started running, before he realized that his hands were still tied behind him, and he would be shot down by one of the archers of the bandits immediately before he even reached the village. So somehow, he had controlled his urge to run to the village with teary eyes. Of course, he didn't let any other bandits notice that his eyes were wet or they would find a way to use even that against him.

Although they did have a small rabbit to eat yesterday night, it wasn't enough to feed everyone, and of course Calubo got the smallest portion of the food. By now the small amount of dried meat that they had brought with them from the quarry had also run out, so even after the fatso's continuous complaints to try to hunt something else since he was too hungry, Nokozal had scolded the fatso and told everyone that they had to hold on for today, since they were too close to the village now, and they couldn't afford anyone in the village to spot a fire.

That had led the bandits to start grumbling, but nobody had dared to go against the orders of the bandit chief. And since then, they all had been hiding under bushes and shrubs, waiting for the runt to report to them.

Immediately after they had arrived here, the bandits had gone closer to take a look into the condition of the small village called Tiranat, while dragging Calubo along with them, as always. After they went closer, he had seen a lot of people near the village doing one thing or another - far more than he had expected, particularly in this near-freezing weather. He also saw what was perhaps a huge barn being constructed ahead of the last houses of the village, for which a new roof was being put up now by a few people who had climbed above it.

Another noticeable thing was that there was a tall wall being built around the village! For sure, he could easily see that those were being built by wooden stakes, unlike the mighty stone walls of Cinran, but still, he had never expected that one day there would be a wall around the whole village of Tiranat! At this point only a small part of the wall was completed in the north, and he couldn't see what was the status of the walls on the other side of the village, but the fact that there was a wall being built at all was completely unexpected to him in the first place. It must have been the doing of the new baron as well, just like it had to be him who had thought of that ruse for the caravan.

Even other than the wall and that huge barn, he saw a flurry of activity everywhere - of people running here and there while carrying something, of a log being pulled by a pair of horses and some kind of wooden contraption with giant wheels, while near the tree line, there were many people who were either sawing the upright trees or chopping branches from already fallen trees.

The few villagers who looked idle were huddled around a few burning braziers - perhaps trying to heat up their bodies before they returned to do whatever they all were doing there. He heard other bandits grumbling at the sight of the villagers having a fire to draw heat from, while they were freezing here. However, Calubo was confused about something after seeing those braziers. Who provided the coal for the villagers to use there anyway? He didn't think any villagers could afford to buy it themselves. And what about those iron braziers? Those couldn't be cheap at all!

At one point he thought he saw a man pulling some weirdly shaped cart, but uh... it had a single wheel only...? But how could a cart work with only a single wheel anyway? Since there was no way a man could pull what would normally need a horse for it! He had shaken his head after that, thinking that he had started to imagine such things because of his constant hunger.

But whether that weird cart really existed or it was just his imagination, there was way too much activity in the village. And he had no idea why so many people were doing whatever they were doing in the cold - shouldn't they be working in the coal mines?

Or were those coal mines still flooded with water? But even then, why were so many people outside their homes in this near-freezing weather anyway? He didn't understand any of it.

Soon, Nokozal told them with a frown that they had seen enough, and ordered everyone to move further back into the forests. Once they had retreated to a far enough distance away from the village, a bandit muttered with his voice full of surprise "What the hell has happened here?"

The fatso asked, "Isn't that a boundary wall we saw being constructed? I know that it is far from complete right now, but why are the villagers making it now when they were fine without a boundary wall for years! If we had come here after a few weeks, we might not have been able to attack the village at all with that huge wall In place!"

Nokozal didn't reply for a while, then he said, "It doesn't change anything for us, since that wall is still not complete anyway."

"But milord," another bandit asked, "you certainly saw that the village has too much activity right now. Shouldn't we wait here for a few days to scout them further before we attack?"

Nokozal glared at him. "And waste even more days stuck here in the cold while being hungry as well? Who knows if those idiots at the quarry still have a hold of my slaves or not! No, we can't afford to wait anymore."

"But still, milord," the fatso interrupted, "you have seen that a lot of area right outside the village has been cleared of trees, so we wouldn't have any cover for that distance, and there were a lot of villagers moving around everywhere, so we would be spotted long before we reached the first houses."

Nokozal nodded slowly. "It's true that there is no point in attacking them in broad daylight, so we will wait for the night. Those villagers would have gone back by then and we would have the benefit of darkness, especially since the skies are cloudy, so there would be no moonlight as well at that time."

He looked around the place for a moment, then pointed to a group of shrubs further away from the village. "That is a good hiding spot. Since there isn't any good cover closer to the village, we will hunker down under those bushes until it gets dark. I had already told the runt that we will wait for him in the northwest of the village. After he reports to me about what he has scouted, our plan will be to raid the village tonight."