“Oliver, the work you begin tomorrow will be no easier than what you did at the mill.” Adrian leaned against the dry earthen wall, his gaze passing over the pieces of meat swaying from the rafters.
“We still need to build a fence and clear the wasteland.
I don’t expect you to work like a full-grown tenant farmer, but as long as I’m here, I won’t let your sister go hungry.” At those words, Oliver’s eyes suddenly reddened.
He scrubbed the grime from his face with his sleeve and answered in a hoarse but unusually firm voice, “My lord, as long as you give us something to eat, I’ll give my life to you.” Adrian did not respond.
Such solemn promises were common in this age, and they were broken just as often.
He merely waved for the two children to rest.
With two more mouths to feed, their supplies had become tight.
The three sacks of rye had originally been intended for Adrian alone and would have provided more than enough flour for one person, but with Oliver and Lucy added, the grain would barely last until the next harvest.
He would have to sow the rye and clear another plot of land to the south.
Even so, when he saw the faint vitality that had returned to the children’s eyes after a meal of meat soup, he knew the bargain had not been a poor one.
The wooden hut smelled faintly of earth, smoke, and grease.
The charcoal inside the stone stove crackled from time to time, its glow falling across the two children as their breathing gradually steadied.
Adrian closed his eyes and felt the warmth trapped inside his roe-deer-hide vest.
He remained a nobleman who believed in the knightly code and regarded his superiority over commoners as natural, but he also intended to become the kind of master who was generous enough—and capable enough—to keep those beneath him alive.
He rested his arming sword across his knees and ran his fingers over the thin layer of grease coating the hilt.
Outside, the river murmured faintly, while inside the hut there were now two additional sets of breaths and the occasional quiet sound of soup being swallowed.
The rye sacks were stacked beside the doorway, the new iron shovel rested against the frame, and a row of smoked meat hung from the rafters.
The soup in the clay pot continued to bubble softly.
Adrian had lived alone on this riverbank for a long time.
Now there were three of them.
…
By the time the first pale light of dawn filtered into the hut the next morning, one place on the pile of straw beside the stove was already empty.
Adrian pushed aside the curtain of woven vines, and the cold morning mist rolled toward him.
Oliver was crouched beside the mountain stream, his hands blue from the icy water as he scrubbed the ashwood bowl with wet sand.
When he saw Adrian emerge, he immediately stood and respectfully raised the polished bowl above his head, grains of sand still clinging between his fingers.
Adrian nodded and motioned for him to return it to the stone platform.
The boy’s instinctive diligence pleased him.
On this riverbank, a person had to prove his value before he could eat smoked meat without shame.
Adrian picked up the iron shovel and followed the path toward the field.
The rye had not yet been sown, and the soil still needed to be turned.
He had originally calculated that the grain he had purchased would easily sustain him until the following autumn.
Now there were two additional mouths to feed, and Oliver, despite his thinness, was a growing boy whose appetite was already close to that of an adult man.
Adrian reached beneath his tunic and removed the small leather pouch containing the cabbage seeds from Blackthorn Village.
He had not yet found the chance to plant them.
“We need to clear another plot beside the rye field for vegetables and sow all of these.” Before they could break the soil, however, they had to secure the field.
Once the wild boars discovered freshly turned earth, they could destroy the entire plot in a single night.
“Oliver, come here.” The boy took Lucy by the hand and hurried over, their boots kicking up a trail of damp soil.
“Drag every hooked thorn branch and fallen limb you can find from the edge of the forest and pile them behind the field boundary,” Adrian ordered, pointing toward the ridge.
Once the tasks had been assigned, he gripped the shovel and drove it into the earth.
The iron blade sliced through the soil with a heavy thud.
Adrian dug a narrow trench roughly half a foot deep around the edge of the field to anchor the fence.
Oliver moved quickly between the forest and the riverbank, returning with his arms full of thorn bushes and packing them tightly into the trench.
A barrier woven from thorns, dead branches, and compressed earth would be much stronger than a line of simple wooden stakes.
Adrian broke the ground and positioned the branches, while Oliver stamped each completed section firmly into place with his heels.
Sweat trickled down Adrian’s back and soaked into the collar of his hide vest.
His arms burned from the repeated digging, but the fence gradually took shape, enclosing the turned soil behind a dense wall of hooked thorns.
From time to time, Adrian straightened and glanced toward the pouch of cabbage seeds.
The shovel cut rhythmically through grass roots, the crisp tearing sound rising and falling across the quiet riverbank.
He stepped heavily on the top of the shovel each time, using his full weight to force the blade into the damp soil.
A dull ache gradually spread across his lower back, while sweat ran from his temples into his eyes, stinging bitterly.
Adrian paused and wiped his face with the back of his hand before looking toward Oliver.
The boy was half-kneeling beside the field with a large bundle of wild rose branches clutched in both hands.
The fine thorns had scratched dozens of thin red lines across his skin, but he paid them no attention.
He remained focused on forcing the branches into the trench, bundle by bundle.
“Pack them more tightly.
Don’t leave gaps,” Adrian said.
“A boar can pry apart half a foot of loose earth with its snout.
Make sure the thorns cross over one another and are driven deep into the mud.” Oliver answered only by holding his breath and stamping his heel down hard.
Under the pressure of his weight and the packed soil, the thorn branches locked firmly into the trench.
Building the fence was exhausting work.
The boundary around two acres was far from small, and the two of them labored from dawn until the sun began to descend.
By evening, a gray-brown barrier nearly half a man’s height surrounded the previously bare field.
The interwoven branches, packed with earth and covered in sharp thorns, resembled a scaled earthen serpent coiled around the rye plot.
Adrian leaned against the shovel handle and looked toward the uncultivated ground south of the field.
A dense thicket of alder grew there, with several large stones half-buried among the weeds.
According to his original plan, they should have rested once the fence was finished.
Yet when he saw Oliver’s determined expression—exhausted but still staring at the land—Adrian decided to use the remaining daylight to begin clearing the vegetable garden.
“Go and pull out those smaller stumps.” He pointed toward the future garden bed, picked up the short sickle, and bent down to cut through the weeds blocking their way.
During the digging that followed, a small nick appeared along the edge of the iron shovel.
Adrian frowned, removed a whetstone from his belt, and crouched beside the field ridge to sharpen the blade with muddy water.
The harsh scraping of stone against iron sounded unusually loud along the silent riverbank.
Nearby, Oliver braced his shoulder against a dead alder root, his muscles trembling violently as he pushed, half his face already covered in mud.