nyslfriends Chapter 61: Court Hearing
Chapter 61: Court Hearing
The last snowfall before the ice melted fell at night.
The fine particles, like someone scattering a handful of ground salt from the sky, landed on the stone walls, the log rafts, and the frozen soil of the training ground that had been trampled for two months, forming a thin layer that hadn't melted by dawn. When the sunlight shone on it, it was so bright that people squinted.
Otto stood beside the side entrance of the stone tower, looking at the thin layer of snow.
He was dressed more neatly than usual today—not because guests were coming, but because Pollifer had cleaned his worn-out chainmail last night, removing most of the rust from the iron rings. Although it was still old, it looked like someone had cared for it. Pollifer didn't say why while cleaning the armor, and Otto didn't ask; both of them knew what day it was.
Over at the training ground, Toren was already having the thirty men line up. A long, sharp sound came from the bone whistle, followed by the sound of shields hitting the ground, perfectly synchronized and without any discrepancies—two months of training had worn down that slight difference in rhythm to almost nothing, although Otto knew it was still there, still in the muscles of some men, but it was no longer audible from a distance.
On the distant river, the ice was a little lighter in color than yesterday.
The ship arrived in the morning.
Sailing downstream from Riverrun, flying the blue and red flag of House Tully, the boat was small, a flat-bottomed, narrow vessel commonly used on inland waterways, with a shallow draft, making it fast. As the boat docked, the sound of the gangplank being lowered carried far across the quiet river.
Otto did not go to the dock to greet him.
He stood by the side gate of the stone tower, watching the man disembark from the boat.
Young, even younger than he had expected, probably in his early twenties, wearing the blue and red robes of the Tully family, with a leather tube for documents hanging from his waist. He walked in the manner of someone moving back and forth in corridors and studies, each step steady, but almost deliberately so. Behind him followed two guards and a scribe carrying a stack of parchment, the scribe walking with his head down, focused on keeping the stack of papers from being blown away by the wind.
Pollifer went up to him, exchanged a few words with the man at the dock, and then led him toward the inner fortress.
Otto watched them walk over.
As the man entered the inner fortress gate, his eyes first swept towards the training ground, then over the stone tower, then over the black and white double-headed eagle flag that fluttered slightly in the breeze, and finally landed on Poliver.
He did not go to see the thirty people.
Otto wrote this down.
They met in the open space outside the longhouse.
The man's name was Amon, the second son of a branch of House Tully, who worked in the clerk's office in Riverrun. Polyver had already given a brief introduction on the way, and Amon nodded, neither enthusiastic nor indifferent; he was simply there to work.
He took the documents out of the leather tube, had the clerk spread them out on the makeshift wooden table, and then turned to Otto.
"Baron Hohenzollern," he said, his voice the kind accustomed to formal occasions—not loud, but each word landing precisely. "His Majesty the Duke's verification order requires thirty adult males with basic combat capabilities, fully equipped, and ready to enlist at any time. I'll just check the men and equipment, sign the document, and then leave you alone."
"He's over there," Otto said.
He nodded to Toren.
The long, resonant sound of the bone whistle rang out.
The thirty men emerged from the preparation area next to the training ground, in two rows of fifteen. Their gait was completely different from two months ago; they wore repaired old leather armor, and a few had donned new fish-scale armor made by Cole, the metal plates gleaming in the reflection of the thin snow.
They walked to the open space, stopped, and stood in two rows.
Eamon glanced at it.
The clerk began counting the people, muttering the numbers softly as he marked each one on the parchment with a charcoal stick. The counting was so quiet in the open space that only the closest people could hear it.
I counted to thirty and then stopped.
The clerk looked up and nodded to Eamon.
"Equipment," Eamon said.
Toren walked to the far left of the group of thirty men and began inspecting them, starting with the first one—lifting the edge of their leather armor to check the padding inside, examining the secure fastening of their spears at their waists, and checking if their boots were cracked enough to impede their movement. He did these things quickly, not as a performance, but simply as he went, and then moved on to the next man.
Amon didn't follow to look. He stood there, his gaze not on the specific equipment, but on the way Toren did it—the way he knew what to investigate without being told.
He was also watching Otto.
Otto stood there, offering no explanation, no guidance, and not even glancing twice in the direction of the thirty men. He simply stood there, waiting for Torun to finish his inspection.
After the inspection, Toren returned.
"Meets the requirements," he said to Eamon in his usual deep voice, like stone striking stone.
Eamon walked to the wooden table and had the clerk spread out the verification documents. He picked up a pen, dipped it in ink, and wrote a few lines on the document. The writing was fast but neat, each line falling precisely in its place—the hand of someone who had written many similar documents. Then he signed his name at the end, took a bronze seal from his waist, and pressed it onto the sealing wax.
The document was folded and placed in the leather tube.
"Verification passed," Emmon said, his tone almost as casual as when he said the weather was nice today.
He told the clerk to put the table away and turned to leave.
Then he paused, turned back, and looked at Otto.
"Your Excellency," he said, his voice lower than before, no longer the volume of a formal occasion, "Scholar Ilyon's report has been seen by everyone in the Duke's manor."
Otto looked at him.
"The Duke is very pleased," Eamon said. "It's not just about numbers and equipment. It's about the overall condition of the territory. The Duke said that among his vassals, there aren't many in charge like you."
After he finished speaking, he nodded and turned to walk towards the dock. Two guards and a clerk followed behind. The clerk had already neatly arranged his stack of parchment, tucked under his arm, and no longer bowed his head as he walked, for he was not afraid of it falling apart.
The boat untied its mooring lines, drifted downstream, and quickly disappeared around the bend in the river.
The thirty people were still standing in the open space.
Otto walked up to them, stood there, and looked at them.
He knew they thought they had just passed a test of their combat capabilities. They assumed the examiner had counted their numbers and checked their equipment because he was assessing their fighting ability.
He scanned the thirty faces. He'd known some for a long time, others only in the last two months. One man's nose was red from the morning chill, and he was trying hard not to rub it, because he couldn't move while lining up. Another man's boot laces were loose, and he was using his toes to hook them inside the boots, trying to keep them from coming undone completely; that small movement made his posture slightly crooked.
"It's over," Otto said.
Two words: no praise, no encouragement.
The thirty people dispersed and walked in their respective directions. The man with the red nose finally rubbed it, and the man whose boot laces were loose squatted down to re-tie them. Someone next to him patted him on the shoulder and said something, and the two of them laughed.
That evening, Otto opened the ledger at the bottom of the stone tower, found a new page, and wrote four words:
He went to war with the army.
Then start writing your name.
The first, the second, and so on up to the tenth. The three characters following each name indicate that person's position and task.
He remembered one of them who had chilblains on his feet when he first came in, making him limp and taking an entire winter to recover. Now, those feet are among the most stable of the thirty people.
The other was recommended by Toren, whose reason for the recommendation was summed up in one sentence: "This person won't be the first to run away in the most chaotic situation."
There was another thing he noticed himself—after each rotation, while everyone else was facing forward again, he would turn his head a little further to glance to his side and behind before turning back. That was a habit only someone who had lived on a real battlefield would have.
After he finished writing, he folded the page and tucked it inside.
Pollifer spent most of the morning notifying all ten people, finding them one by one, saying those few words, and then leaving. Some nodded, some asked where they were going but were turned away, and some remained silent for a while before responding. He then focused his attention on the next task he needed to do.
After notifying the last person, he went back to the accounting office, wrote today's date next to the list, and then re-stacked the stack of unfinished bills in front of him—aligning them from top to bottom, left to right, and making sure each one was in the correct position. Then he pushed the stack of papers to the corner of the table, picked up a charcoal stick, and continued checking today's figures.
Edric was discovered in the evening.
No one told him; he figured it out himself. After training ended and everyone was leaving, as he was tidying up damaged equipment beside the weapons rack, he overheard Pollifer informing someone else, and he heard what he heard. He mentally counted everyone he knew had been notified that day; with this one, it was the tenth.
Then Pollifer left. He didn't come this way.
He put down the gun barrel he was inspecting, which was only half-finished, and sat down on the wooden stake.
The snow on the training field was trampled and messed up by today's training, but the shape of each footprint was still clear. He recognized a few of the footprints—they were made by the people he had trained with in the backless formation rotation. He knew how those people's bodies reacted when they received the touch, who was fast, who was slow, and who could maintain their sense of direction even in the most chaotic situation.
Two of those people are on the list; they won't be training on this field anymore after tomorrow.
He knew why Otto hadn't chosen him. He could figure out the reason himself: he was more valuable in the territory than in the Pike City Corridor.
He had fought many battles at the Trident River, and some of them he knew would be difficult even before they began. In those times, he would find a place to sit, do nothing, just sit and let the impending event linger beside him. By the time he stood up, his body already knew the weight of that event.
He sat on the stake until the light in the training field went completely dark, then stood up, picked up the gun barrel again, and continued his inspection. Near the bottom was a fine crack, left by the wood naturally cracking in the extreme cold, which might widen if extra force was needed at the apex.
He put the gun barrel into the damage box, made a mental note of it, and told Toren to replace it the next day.
Otto stood on the top of the stone tower late that night.
The ice hadn't melted yet, and the river surface was white, but something within that whiteness was beginning to change. Something was starting to loosen at the edge, somewhere indistinct from this distance.
The ten names were written down, handed in, and the notification was given.
That concludes the portion that can be recorded.
The wind came from the north, blowing up a thin layer of snow on the river. The snow floated above for a moment, then fell back down and was absorbed by the white expanse of snow.
He spoke softly, facing the river, his voice low, so low it sounded like he was confirming something rather than speaking to someone:
"Once the ice melts, we'll set off."
Those words were carried away by the wind and scattered into the darkness of the valley.
He stood there for a while longer.
In the distance, light peeked through the cracks in the windows of the longhouse; the hearth was still burning, indicating that some people were still awake, or perhaps they were asleep but the fire hadn't gone out. The light appeared as a tiny orange dot in the darkness.
Then he turned around and walked back.