Chapter 42 — Empty Land

Chapter 42: Chapter 42 — Empty Land

Chapter 42 — Empty Land

Sir Edric Avenholt was buried with his broken shield. The villagers had wrapped him in a clean cloak and placed his sword over his chest, and the five other dead lay beside him beneath simpler coverings. Christopher arrived before midday with Mabel, Ivo, four apprentices, three wagons and a dozen workers.

No one cheered when the recovered cattle entered the village. People came from the surviving houses and touched the animals, counting them by hand, and a woman found her husband’s tool belt among the returned bundles and began crying without making a sound.

Christopher left the property in the captain’s care and went to the graves.

Edric’s captain was a tired man with grey in his beard and a leather brace around one knee. He had once trained as a Knight Apprentice but never advanced beyond it.

"We waited for you," he said.

Christopher studied the covered bodies. "Thank you."

The burial was brief. A village elder spoke of Edric’s service in the war and his decision to lead families north when easier land might have been found elsewhere, and they filled the graves with northern soil.

Afterward, Mabel took control of the hall. Two burned patients needed their dressings changed, and the woman with the broken arm had been bound too tightly; her fingers had begun swelling. Mabel loosened the splint and told Christopher that three wounded people could travel only if they were laid flat in wagons.

"Can they remain here?" he asked.

"With guards, food and someone who knows what to watch for."

The village had little of any.

Christopher met the household heads beside the stream. Eighteen families had arrived with Edric, and all remained represented, though several had lost husbands, sons or parents. They listened while Bennet’s clerk read the simple facts aloud.

Edric had no wife or child in the expedition. His elder brother would inherit whatever southern property Edric possessed, but not automatically the conditional northern grant, since that required Edric to occupy and develop the land; with his death, its disposition returned to the Crown.

Christopher left the law to Northgate.

"Northgate will investigate," he said. "Until then, this village has too few defenders and the orcs know where it is."

"The orcs are dead," one farmer said.

"Those seven are. We don’t know who else crossed the frontier."

The farmer turned toward the northern ridge.

Christopher continued. "Dragonwatch has walls and room. Not comfortable room, but protected room. You may shelter there until Northgate decides what happens to the grant."

"Under what terms?" asked an older woman.

"Temporary shelter first. You keep your personal property. Food and work are recorded. If you later choose to settle at Dragonwatch, we make separate terms. I won’t make that decision for you beside fresh graves."

Several people looked relieved. Others remained suspicious.

"And Sir Edric’s property?" the captain asked.

"Keep his sword, armor, papers and personal chest sealed for Northgate. Leave the livestock and village tools with the families until the officials decide."

Christopher ordered the cattle taken to Dragonwatch and recorded separately until Northgate ruled on the abandoned holding.

The evacuation began that afternoon. People packed too much at first—bed frames, cracked pots, roof boards and sacks of damp grain appeared beside the wagons—until Bennet walked through the piles with the household heads and reduced them without ordering anyone to abandon irreplaceable possessions.

Sound grain came first, then seed, tools, blankets, cooking pots and clothing. The wet or scorched grain remained separated. Mabel checked it for mold and warned that some could be dried for animals but not mixed into the good stores.

The villagers caught their remaining chickens and tied goats behind the carts. Three cattle stayed near the recovered herd. The two stolen horses were thin but usable.

They could not leave before morning. Mabel refused to move the worst wounded until they had rested after treatment, and Ivo placed apprentices at both ends of the village and sent two-man watches to the burned tower hill.

Christopher slept in Edric’s hall. The dead lord’s papers remained in a small iron-bound chest near the bed; Christopher did not open it. The captain had sealed it with wax pressed by Edric’s signet, then handed the signet to Christopher for safekeeping.

"You’re the nearest baron," the man said.

"Sir Edric’s death does not make his grant mine."

"No," the captain said. "It makes the sealed chest your problem until Northgate sends someone."

Christopher could not argue.

Near midnight, a child began screaming in one of the houses. The sound ended after her mother woke her. Around the hall, nobody slept well.

The captain remained awake beside the hearth, and Christopher found him repairing a split strap from Edric’s armor even though the armor had already been sealed.

"Habit," the man said.

Christopher sat opposite him. "How long did you serve him?"

"Eleven years. His father before that."

"Will Sir Edric’s brother order you to return south?"

"Perhaps. The men with families here may not go."

"Were you bound to Edric personally or to his house?"

"That depends which family clerk reads the oath."

Christopher had hoped for a simple answer. The captain gave him none.

The captain laid down the strap. "You want to know whether the fighters come with the villagers."

"I want to know whether accepting them starts a dispute with Avenholt’s family."

"Sir Edric was a younger son. His brother wanted the northern title if Edric succeeded and none of the northern burden if he failed."

"That tells me what his brother wanted. It does not answer what happens to your oath."

"I can’t answer that."

Christopher appreciated the honesty. "Then nobody swears anything until Northgate answers."

"That’s sensible."

The captain’s attention drifted to the room where Edric had died. "He wasn’t a fool."

"I didn’t say he was."

"People will. They will see the fence and say he chose wrong."

Christopher thought of his own delayed field drain and the wall work that had taken farmers from their crops. "Every unfinished thing is a choice somewhere else."

The captain gave him a tired look. "You have not been a lord long."

Christopher’s hand tightened around his cup. "No," he said. "Not long."

They departed after sunrise. The procession was smaller than the convoy that brought Christopher north, but it felt slower: wounded people lay in two carts, families walked beside loads containing what remained of their attempt at a new life, and the captain rode Edric’s horse and looked back repeatedly at the wooden village.

Three men wanted to remain and hold it until Northgate arrived. Godfrey had killed the raiders, and leaving made them feel like cowards.

Christopher refused.

"You can’t defend eighteen empty houses with three men."

"Someone may steal what remains."

"Then they steal roof beams. I won’t trade three lives for them."

They barred the hall, marked the graves and left the outer houses as they stood.

The journey to Dragonwatch took most of two days because of the wounded and livestock. Scouts stayed ahead and behind. No orcs appeared.

The first wagon broke a trace before midday. Instead of halting everyone, Ivo moved the wounded into another cart while Wat’s assistant repaired the leather. One family objected when their seed sacks were placed on the ground; another refused to let strangers handle a chest containing the last clothing of a dead son.

Christopher let Bennet settle both arguments.

At camp, the newcomers kept apart from Dragonwatch’s workers. They cooked from their own pots and counted their children twice before sleeping, and the recovered cattle were tied inside a ring of wagons with two guards posted nearby. Nobody wanted to lose them again.

When Dragonwatch came into view, several Avenholt children stopped walking. Even damaged, the stone walls and towers dwarfed their wooden village. Guarded kitchens sent up smoke instead of burned homes, apprentices watched from the western platform, and the repaired gate stood open, with the movable barriers visible behind it.

Inside, the reality was less grand. Families crowded into the cleared barracks. Blankets divided sleeping spaces. Joan assigned hearths and warned everyone where water, latrines and the infirmary corner could be found, while Cedric wanted to know how many adults could work and Bennet wanted to count the food before promising anything.

Christopher ordered both men to wait until the newcomers had eaten.

Edric’s sealed chest went into the secure store. His armor, sword and signet were listed beside it. The village tools and animals were recorded separately but put to use where necessary.

At sunset, Dragonwatch held eighteen more families than it had two days earlier.

It also held their fear.

Lord Marshal Baldwin Griffin read the casualty line twice. One landed knight. Five settlers and retainers. Seven wounded. Eight orc attackers, one killed during the raid and seven killed afterward by Sir Godfrey Hales’s party.

He placed the report on the Northgate table.

"Eight," he said.

The officer opposite him nodded. "One Grom among them."

"And one settlement is already empty," Baldwin said.

The report had arrived with Edric Avenholt’s seal and his captain’s account. Christopher Drake set aside any claim to the dead knight’s land or his people. The survivors were sheltering at Dragonwatch.

Baldwin cared less about the property than the route.

"Where did the raiders cross into Avenholt’s land?"

"Unknown. Their trail joins the old shepherd road north of Avenholt’s grant. Drake’s scouts did not follow it beyond Split Pine Ridge."

"Then Drake’s scouts made the correct decision. Seven raiders loose behind us would have invited another attack."

Northgate could not send riders chasing every old track into the frontier, but it also could not ignore a Grom appearing among scattered new settlements.

Baldwin ordered six riders to inspect the village, graves and trail. They would confirm the raid and its direction. They were not to enter the Frozen Wastes.

"Send copies to the nearest margrave houses," he said. "And all registered claimants east of the river."

"Do the claimants receive the complete report?"

"Numbers, location, direction. Not the property inventory."

The warning left Northgate before noon.

Before the riders departed, Baldwin had the Grom’s description read aloud. Height, armor, weapon, scars: most details disagreed. The one point repeated in every account was its discipline: it had led the others toward the livestock and withdrawn when the settlement broke.

That troubled Baldwin. The raiders had chosen a weak settlement, struck quickly and carried food north.

"Tell the patrols to watch the old crossings," he said. "Not only the main road."

"There are dozens."

"Then begin with those that can carry cattle."

Baldwin sent a separate report south to Griffin City. It contained no dramatic language: a Grom had crossed into Varenne with seven followers, destroyed one conditional settlement and been killed by a Silver Knight from another. The frontier remained intact.

That final sentence was necessary. Without it, frightened officials might demand a general mobilization; with it, comfortable officials might ignore the deaths completely.

He added a request for replacement signal horns, medical supplies and two more mounted patrol sections. He expected to receive the horns.

By the following day, different versions travelled with it.

At an established northern keep, a margrave’s officers pointed to the destroyed settlement as proof that the Crown had scattered unprepared southerners across land they could not patrol. They requested authority to organize every claimant within three days of their roads.

At Harcourt’s settlement, Roland read that one Grom had killed a veteran Black Iron knight. He ordered his outer patrol doubled and sent copies to the minor lords who had accepted Harcourt protection.

Wentworth announced a coordinated river watch. Alliance members would contribute riders according to the size of their forces. Those who refused could not expect Wentworth patrols to leave the river road for them.

Fairfax offered space inside its unfinished timber defenses to two nearby claimants during emergencies, with an invitation to discuss shared guards and supply purchases attached.

The three ducal groups passed the orc warning between them, and each also used the raid to draw frightened claimants closer. Every warning carried the same lesson: isolated settlements died. Each alliance offered a different answer, led by a different ducal banner.

Roland Harcourt’s answer was the least demanding in public. Members shared urgent reports and supplied riders when an allied settlement faced attack. In private, Harcourt officers decided which roads deserved patrols first.

Wentworth’s answer was more organized. Every member promised a fixed number of patrol days each month. That suited lords close to the river and burdened those farther away.

Fairfax offered pooled purchasing and temporary refuge behind its growing timber defenses. Its network was smaller, but merchants liked dealing with one clerk instead of ten poor barons.

Minor claimants compared the offers with the seriousness of men choosing where they might flee.

The margraves understood the value of organized patrols. They also understood that every shared road and market reduced the newcomers’ need for established northern protection.

The established northern nobles gave their own answer. New claimants should accept local patrol authority, respect old tolls and stop treating prewar maps as superior to northern charters.

Arguments that had begun over bridges and boundary stones gained sharper edges.

One Harcourt patrol attempted to cross an old toll bridge without paying twice for the same road. The northern guards lowered the barrier. Voices rose, and one rider drew steel before his officer struck the blade down and ordered him back.

No one died, though both sides reported that the other had threatened royal peace.

Near Wentworth’s river grant, two groups removed and replaced the same boundary marker over three nights. On the fourth, the northern lord posted six armed men beside it, and Wentworth sent a clerk rather than Knights.

No swords were drawn, but armed men now watched the marker.

At isolated grants, men stopped repairing roofs long enough to deepen ditches. Bells were hung from rough frames. Farmers who had laughed at midnight watch duty no longer laughed when their turn came, and every distant column of smoke drew eyes toward the north.

The old nobles had their own divisions. One northern count wanted the newcomers placed beneath existing patrol commands. Another preferred letting weak grants fail so the Crown would stop issuing impossible patents. A third saw new villages as customers for grain, timber and iron.

The margraves agreed about the southern claimants and little else. Margrave houses could compel service from their own vassals, but they could not legally summon Christopher or the ducal claimants merely because those settlements stood in the north. The Crown’s order had created new titles without answering every question about regional command.

The orcs did not care which charter was older.

At Northgate, Baldwin received complaints faster than he received surveyors, and he refused to send soldiers to every tollhouse and pasture.

"If no blood was shed, they can compare charters," he said. "If blood was shed, send names."

The investigation itself required more than reading Christopher’s report.

Baldwin selected one of his older officers and a cavalry sergeant who knew how to read tracks after rain. Four mounted guards would accompany them.

"Dragonwatch first," Baldwin ordered. "Speak to Drake, Hales, the dead man’s captain and some of the families. Make certain they came willingly. Then inspect the grant."

The officer nodded. "And the trail?"

"Visit it. Count the graves. Compare the damage with the witness statements. Follow the orc trail only as far as necessary to confirm direction."

"What happens to Avenholt’s families while we investigate?"

"Let them remain behind Drake’s walls until you return. I won’t send them back to a burned village to make the matter look tidy."

The riders departed Northgate the following morning with food for the road and spare arrows. The sergeant had orders to request guides if needed, not to strip northern patrols from their own routes.

Before leaving the final gate, Baldwin’s officer read Christopher’s report again. The young baron had been careful. Whether that came from honesty or fear remained to be seen.

The Grom concerned Baldwin more. Scattered low-ranked stragglers were expected after the war, but Grom warriors leading raids against new settlements suggested either greater confidence or greater need. One incident proved little. A second would prove more than Baldwin wanted.

He ordered orc reports passed ahead of toll disputes and missing livestock. Urgent sightings would move between Northgate, margrave keeps and the three ducal networks even when other information did not.

No lord was required to share private patrol strength or supply counts. They were required to report organized orc groups.

The urgent warning order reached Dragonwatch ahead of the investigators. It permitted Christopher to continue sheltering Avenholt’s people temporarily but made no ruling on their service, the failed grant, or Edric’s property.

Christopher read the message beside Godfrey.

"So everyone shares warnings," he said.

"Warnings, yes," Godfrey replied. "Not necessarily help."

That difference appeared in the second letter delivered with it. The familiar dark green wax belonged to powerful ducal House Harcourt.

Another copy of the warning travelled east to House Bell. Wystan Nettleby received orders to ask patrols about unfamiliar hoofprints, missing livestock and smoke beyond abandoned farms. Bell’s forces were already stretched, so no permanent patrol was sent to Avenholt’s empty grant.

The margrave’s officers did not object to Dragonwatch sheltering the survivors; a populated stone fortress on the eastern approach was more useful than another ruined village. They cared far more about the Grom and the road it had used.

For several days, arguments over tolls and boundaries quieted while the northern houses and ducal alliances listened for horns from the frontier.