Solomon knew his time was short before he had to ride to Deddings castle.
Before he left, he wanted to see the land and people he actually ruled.
He needed to understand what he was working with, and he needed the smallfolk to see their new lord before he disappeared again.
He took Old Niken with him.
Luden and Rosslyn walked behind, hands tight on their sword hilts.
This was the first time they had ever accompanied a lord on an inspection of the village.
Even though they had lived their whole lives here, they looked tense and out of place.
The land was worse than Solomon had imagined.
Low, uneven ground, constantly damp.
Thick stands of reeds and marsh grass grew everywhere.
The few small houses were little more than crude shelters built from mud, sticks, and bundled reeds.
They sat so low to the ground that Solomon doubted they kept out much rain or wind.
The air smelled of wet rot and old mud.
This isn’t a village, he thought.
It’s a refugee camp that never left.
Every step sank into the soft earth.
The ground never seemed to dry out.
He could already feel the damp seeping through his boots.
He turned to Old Niken.
“How are the harvests here?
Is there any other way the people make a living?” Old Niken sighed.
“The land gives just enough to survive in a good year.
Sometimes a little extra to store.
But most years… it’s barely enough.
We have almost no coin coming in.
The fish and shrimp we catch are barely enough for ourselves.
No one is buying from us.” He gave a bitter little laugh.
“If reeds were worth anything, we might be the richest house in the Seven Kingdoms.
We have enough to bury King’s Landing twice over.” Solomon didn’t answer.
He was still trying to imagine how anyone was supposed to build something lasting on ground like this.
A sudden commotion broke the quiet.
Children’s voices, shouting and crying.
A short distance away, several ragged boys were rolling in the mud, hitting each other.
“Luden,” Solomon said.
“Break that up.” Luden jogged over and pulled the boys apart with clumsy hands.
“Why are you fighting?” he barked.
The children went quiet, staring up at the armed man with wide eyes.
One of the braver ones pointed at another boy and sniffled.
“He was supposed to be the ironborn, but he cheated and hit me!” The boy being accused shouted back, face streaked with mud and tears, “I want to be Lord Solomon’s soldier!
I want to fight for Lord Solomon!” Solomon stopped walking.
He listened to the children argue over who got to pretend to be him, and felt something heavy settle in his chest.
Before he could say anything, the noise had already drawn attention.
Doors opened.
People stepped out of the low reed huts.
Most of them were women and children.
A few very old men.
Their clothes were little more than rags.
Some of the smaller children were completely naked.
Every face was thin.
Many had the swollen bellies that came from long hunger.
Their skin was weathered and gray from years of hard living in the damp.
They looked like survivors of something, not people who had always lived here.
Then Solomon saw her.
The widow Hake — the same woman who had thrown herself at his feet outside the tower — came running toward him.
She was even thinner than he remembered.
One hand clutched a small boy of five or six.
When she reached him, she dropped straight to her knees in the mud, pulling both children down with her.
She began knocking her head against the ground, hard.
“Lord Solomon!
Lord Solomon!” Her voice was hoarse.
“Thank you!
Thank you for saving us!” Tears poured down her face as she looked up at him.
“My children would have starved without you.
We would all be dead.
You gave us grain when we had nothing.
You gave us hope.” She turned to the two boys and grabbed their faces, making them look at Solomon.
“Remember his face,” she told them fiercely.
“This is Lord Solomon.
This is the man who saved your lives when your father died.
Never forget what he did for us.
When you are older, you will serve him the way your father did.” Both boys, wide-eyed and solemn, began bowing their heads to Solomon as well.
The widow kept speaking, louder now, so the growing crowd could hear.
“Remember his kindness!
All of you!
When you grow up, repay him the way your fathers would have wanted!” Her voice broke on the last words.
That was when the crying started.
It began with one woman, then spread.
Soon the entire miserable little gathering was weeping.
One by one, they sank to their knees in the mud.
The ground quickly turned dark with tears.
“Seven bless Lord Solomon!” “May the gods give him long life!” “He saved us when no one else would!” They weren’t kneeling out of fear.
They were kneeling because a lord had done something none of them had ever expected — he had given instead of taken.
Solomon stood still and let them cry.
From Old Niken he already knew the truth of how things usually worked in the Riverlands.
When a lord called his smallfolk to war and they died, their families were often left with nothing.
The widow might lose her land.
She and her daughters could be forced into marriages the lord chose.
Old people and children might be charged a “deficiency tax” for no longer having a working man in the household.
If they couldn’t pay, the land went to someone else.
That was normal.
Solomon had simply not done those things.
He had given the families of the dead what little the tower still had.
In their eyes, that made him extraordinary.
He didn’t speak.
There was nothing useful he could say right now.
These people were grateful because the bar for decency was so low it was buried in the mud.
After a while, he turned without a word and began walking back toward the tower.
Old Niken and the two guards followed.
Behind him, the soft sound of weeping continued among the reeds.