Novels2Search

Chapter 13

When we entered the village it was near dusk. The malnourished people walked slowly. I just brought them to my home. My mother and father were shocked by what they were seeing. So my mother quickly brought a lot of food from our cellar. They attacked the food like the hungry wolves. While as a family we watched our guests eat my father asked the question “Who is those people and what happened to them” Tim started to cry and hugged the mother and said “Mother, it was terrible, people are terrible, evil. The Alfred Herch guy, and his guards and his knights and his ... “ he sobbed a few times  and continued “They are so cruel so evil” Father looked at me I said “That is a long story, but shortly those people are villagers like us but unlike us they are not free peasants, they are serfs. They have no right to leave their villages and they are no land of their own. Father nodded “I heard the horror stories of escaped people begging our just Lord Steel to not give them back to Baron Herch, but our lord is just a grand knight and Herch is a Baron, also the king does not care how people are treated as long as he gets his tribute. So by law our Lord had to give them back. So Tim son I am sorry but their suffering is not ended.” Tim said “But Hank bought them from that evil wizard, he even has the paper, show them Hank”  My father looked at me with curious eyes i just extended the paper to him. He said “That seems legit” Of course he couldn’t read it either but there was a sign and a seal. Then he said “Son our lord Steel not allow owning slaves in his land. If you are not just going through his land you can’t keep your slaves.” I turned to him and said “Who told you I want to own them. They suffered enough and I had means to help. So I helped them.” My father nodded. Elle asked “How much you paid for all those people and how can you pay” I said “That is my trade secret” Father said to me “It's dangerous to keep them as slaves.” I said “Who told you I would keep  them as slaves. They are free, just now.” I turned to soon to be ex slaves and said “I release you from your slavery” they looked at me with wondering eyes, the stoic girl from before spoke “We are apriciate all you have done for us but whe have nowhere to go.” I started to think, they had no job, no land to feed themselves, no hope to survive in the wild. I wanted to do good with helping them but if you don’t give a slave means to help themselves you are not helping them at all.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

We hid them in the barn for a week. At that time my father, me and my brothers went to a derelict house and fixed it for them. Build some hand spindle and looms with the help of our village carpenter neighbour. I buy a lot of wool for them to turn it on to yarn and then the fabric. I had money so I bought some food stuff from the village for them.

After all that we put the people in the house, as expected they know how to use spindles and looms. They had a job now. Not a good job, but at least they weren’t going to starve.

My father personally went to the lord's keep, a seven meter tall square shaped stone tower and told him the story of these people being landless peasants and me meeting them on the road and deciding to help them. Of course lord Marcus being the nice man he is personally sees the landless peasants and helps them to fit in. The 13 told what I said to them to lord Steel and they didn’t blow my story.

So after all that I had an order of weapons to make.