nownovels Chapter 22: Quicklime and Wooden Stakes
Chapter 22: Quicklime and Wooden Stakes
The scorching summer sun, like a vicious furnace, baked the mudflats of the Blue Fork River Valley, composed of silt and decaying grass, into a giant steamer.
There wasn't a breath of wind in the air, only swarms of greenbottle flies buzzing. They hovered over the muddy puddles around the camp and the fish bones carelessly discarded by the refugees, before brazenly flying towards the open-air iron pots.
Otto stood on the second floor of the unfinished stone tower, his left arm still in a sling, his brow furrowed. Through the cracks in the wooden window, he could see two refugees clutching their stomachs in agony, vomiting violently in the shadows behind the longhouse.
"Four more this morning."
The clerk, Pollifer, stood behind Oto, his voice tinged with barely concealed anxiety.
"Fever, diarrhea, and watery stools. The willow bark remedy left by Maester Theron is almost gone."
"It's either a fever or dysentery caused by drinking dirty water containing feces."
Otto turned around, his grey-blue eyes devoid of any pity, only displaying a coldness born of facing a deficit in the accounts.
"Polliver, we won the waterway in our battle with Tytos Blackwood, but that doesn't mean we've survived. If a massive dysentery outbreak were to occur in this muddy wasteland, none of us 284 men would last a month. The plague doesn't need wooden fences; it will devour us from the inside."
"Then what should we do, sir? It's too hot. The meat will go bad if left out for half a day. And those refugees... they're used to washing their clothes and faces by the river, and then relieving themselves in the reeds."
Pollifer wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Habits can be forcibly changed, with whips and hunger."
Otto strode down the wooden stairs of the stone tower, his heavy footsteps echoing through the empty tower.
"Blow the whistle and summon all the labor team leaders and militiamen. Immediately."
Half an hour later, dozens of key members of the tribe gathered on the patch of mud in the center of the camp, which had been barely compacted. The sun was scorching, but when they saw Otto's expressionless, pale face, they all instinctively straightened their backs.
"Toren."
Otto didn't waste any words and looked directly at the old soldier from the North.
"Gather your twelve veterans. From today onward, they will only be responsible for perimeter security and cohesion of the core formation. They don't need to get their hands dirty with the mess inside the camp."
Toren grinned and stroked his beard. He had long since grown tired of having his men watching those vagrants defecate all day.
"Five men were selected from the twenty-five militiamen."
Otto pointed to several of the most burly-looking men in the militia ranks, menacing in their eyes.
"From today onwards, you are the 'camp inspectors.' No need to carry spears; your weapons are peeled willow whips."
The five militiamen who were named were stunned for a moment, then a hint of excitement at gaining power flashed in their eyes.
"Polliv, promulgate the Iron Law," Otto coldly ordered.
Pollifer opened the parchment in his hand, cleared his throat, and read aloud:
"First, water source isolation! From today onwards, water may only be drawn from the deep water area a hundred paces upstream from the stone tower; all washing, slaughtering, and excretion must be moved to the mudflats half a mile downstream! Violators will be whipped ten times and their entire family will have their rations withheld for three days!"
"Secondly, a water-boiling order! No one, even if they are dying of thirst, may drink the raw water from the Blue Fork River directly. All drinking water must be boiled in large pots before being distributed!"
"Thirdly, the sterilization pitfall! Master Cole!"
One-eyed blacksmith Cole stepped out from the crowd. Otto looked at him and gave the engineering instructions:
"Take ten strong men to the north slope. Don't mine iron ore anymore; go mine limestone. I want to see a simple lime kiln burning within three days. Spread the quicklime, twice a day, morning and evening, thickly in the newly dug pit latrine downstream."
A slight commotion arose among the crowd. For these refugees who couldn't even get enough to eat, spending precious firewood to boil water and even expending manpower to burn stones to pave toilets was simply an incomprehensible obsession with cleanliness by the noble lords.
"Sir, firewood is too precious..." a labor team leader complained in a low voice, mustering his courage, "and it's too dangerous to go half a mile downstream to relieve myself at night..."
"Snapped!"
Before he could finish speaking, a newly appointed camp inspector lashed the group leader on the back with a whip, interrupting his complaint.
"Just do what the boss tells you to do! Stop talking nonsense!" the inspector scolded, fully embracing his managerial role.
Otto did not stop the vigils' brutality. This was exactly the effect he wanted—to use a small privileged class formed among the displaced to ruthlessly suppress the inertia of the lower classes.
But he knew very well that pressure and whips alone could only suppress resentment temporarily. To truly get these people to willingly settle down in this quagmire, he had to offer them a deal they couldn't refuse.
"I know you're exhausted, and there's nowhere to even put your feet in this muddy mess."
Otto's voice wasn't loud, but it was extremely penetrating. He took a step back, allowing Pollifer to bring out a large bundle of sharpened birch stumps.
"Many of you were once homeless people, bankrupt farmers, or refugees fleeing war. You have owned nothing in your lives except the rags you wear."
Otto pulled a stake out with his right hand and walked to a slightly flattened patch of ground behind the longhouse, raised by logs and pebbles. He drove the stake firmly into the ground.
"Starting this week, each group will be divided into labor teams of ten. If your team does not violate any of the sanitation rules this week and completes the digging and laying of the drainage ditches and 'log drainage roads'—"
Otto looked around; those previously indifferent eyes were now fixed intently on the wooden stake in his hand.
"On the seventh day, which is the Sabbath of the Seven Gods, I will not assign you any lordly labor. Instead, I will provide your groups with timber and clay, and allow you to drive your own 'hut boundary markers' into this high ground."
Upon hearing this, the entire muddy ground fell into a deathly silence, with only heavy breathing audible.
"Each group will be allocated a plot of land measuring two zhang square."
Otto's voice was like an alluring spell.
"You can weave frames from branches, plaster them with mud mixed with straw, and build your own mud-walled huts. As long as I live and this double-headed eagle banner stands, the huts you build will be your private property in the territory of Hohenzollern."
The crowd erupted in cheers.
In Westeros, for the lower classes, a piece of land belonging to themselves and legally recognized by their lord is worth far more than a few silver stags. It is dignity, a home, and their shell in a cruel world.
Those refugees who had just been complaining about how far it was to relieve themselves downstream now had a terrifying drive in their eyes. They even looked at each other with wariness—anyone who dared to urinate or defecate indiscriminately and prevent the whole group from getting the "thatched hut land" would be beaten to death by their own group.
"Dismissed, get back to work." Otto waved his hand.
The crowd dispersed at an unprecedented speed. The newly appointed camp inspectors gripped their willow whips even tighter; they were now patrolling not only for power, but also for their own posts.
"My lord, that's a ruthless move."
Pollyver watched the displaced people frantically digging drainage ditches and couldn't help but sigh.
"You used a few plots of land that were originally empty to not only buy their lives, but also make them watch over each other's stomachs."
"This isn't ruthlessness, Pollifer; this is the exchange of humanity for order."
Otto watched as drainage ditches gradually took shape in the mud. In this era before cement, they were laying felled hardwood logs horizontally across the swamp, filling the gaps with gravel. This simple yet sturdy "log road" would connect the stone towers, longhouses, and future shantytowns into a dry network.
"No one will fight to the death for the lord's whip, but everyone will fight to the death for their own roof."
In the sweltering heat of late summer, wisps of acrid white smoke rose from the north slope. That was the first fire lit in Cole's lime kiln.
In this muddy land, which the feudal lords regarded as wasteland, amidst the pungent smell of quicklime and the clanging of logs, a rough, savage, but tenacious order of survival is taking deep root on the banks of the Lancha River.