The next few hours were a blur of activity. Everything seemed to be happening at once. There were fifty-two cauldrons altogether. There was a small river running down through the town and they setup camps along the bank of the river outside the walls. Tall posts with flags on the end marked each camp. The flags had different signs on them. They used numbers but, to most of the people, they were just meaningless signs. They started bringing the shingles, piling them beyond the gate, making fifty piles each of two hundred shingles. Four or five people tackled each pile, marking the shingles with a number corresponding to the signs on the flags. As the people of the following started to arrive, they were each handed a shingle, told to find the flag with the corresponding sign on it and wait there; food would be provided for them. Manueline, Wals, Brac and Drem did most of the explaining to begin with. They recruited others from within the following and quickly had a group of ten or more people for each of the piles of shingles standing by to explain to the new arrivals what they should do.
In the meantime, the cauldrons were brought out of the town, each carried by four men on poles slung between them. The cauldrons were followed by firewood, sacks of grain and salt for the soup and paddles to stir it with, mostly improvised out of lumber requisitioned from a boat yard.
Miraculously, they served the first food well before sunset, as the bulk of the following came to the town. Wals walked among them, talking to them, reinforcing the instructions given about where to go and how to get food. People had to provide a clean, dry shingle in order to obtain food. One or two were caught washing theirs and going back a second time. The crowd generally dealt with them swiftly and brutally. The same fate was meted out to others who tried to steal a shingle from someone else or go back and get a second shingle. Generally, people were patient and did not have to wait long for food. Manueline went round reinforcing the instructions about hygiene. Picks and shovels were brought out from the town and people dug latrines for each of the flag poles establishing something like an orderly camp, somewhere a person could eat, sleep and take care of their bodily needs.
As the evening came on and the following settled into the camp provided for them, Illumina came, found Wals, and took him with her into the town. Using Grana as a guide, she had been doing the rounds of the major houses. Talking to all the significant people in Norton, discovering what position they would take on Wals being Lord of the North. Many simply did not care. So long as they could continue to live their life much as they had lived it before, they would neither support nor oppose him. Some believed they could gain more influence in the north by supporting some other candidate, especially the Captain of the Guard. Some people thought they might stand a chance at the position; an old uncle of the former North Lord, someone who claimed to have the support of the South Lord, another who thought he might purchase the position.
Illumina dealt with each of them in turn. A simple direct threat deterred the uncle. She avoided the man claiming the support of the South Lord but spoke to three of his principle supporters, shaking their confidence by pointing out the impossibility of any communication with the South Lord in the time available. Whatever the South Lord might be doing he could not be doing it because of events in Norton, there was not time enough for him to learn anything and respond to it. The wealthy man she spoke to briefly, ostensibly encouraging him to pursue the position, also asking him how much he could afford to spend on it, giving him to understand that it would be a lot more than he had imagined. By the time she left him, he was nowhere near as belligerent in his assertions about his qualifications and the lack of qualifications to be seen in Wals.
The Captain of the guard presented a different problem in that he was not present and no one openly advocated him as the North Lord. Illumina discovered some of the people who were whispering in his favor and invited them, together with a number of other people she was sure of, to a reception in the town hall. This is where she took Wals. Illumina had carefully arranged matters. It was a sit down dinner with the tables graduated from those packed with people who openly supported Wals to a couple in the center of the hall dominated by people who opposed him. She and Wals went from table to table. They spoke to each of the groups in turn, starting with those who supported him. The people stood and bowed as they walked up to the table. Wals greeted them using the touch to the jaw, which Illumina had carefully mentioned as being the death touch. Throughout the afternoon, she laughingly told the story of how the people of the Death March believed that Wals could kill merely by touching someone, especially touching them at the point of the jaw. It was clear that most of the people were terrified at the prospect of being touched by him, many of them going white and barely able to stand as he went round the table touching each of them in turn.
That afternoon, Illumina had carefully chosen the man among the opposition who Wals would touch first. He was trembling with fright as Wals approached him and passed out when Wals actually touched him. There was a commotion round the tables but people were too frightened of Wals to either run away or protest. Illumina called some of the hall servants over and had them carry the man away. Wals looked quietly at the other people round the table. All of them bowed very carefully. Wals just stood for a while watching them; then he resumed his circuit round the table, touching each of them in turn. There was no further sign of any opposition as they went through the rest of the tables. Illumina was sure there would be no trouble, at least until the Captain of the Guard arrived.
No one in the company slept that night other than a few snatched moments waiting for a message or listening to Illumina or Wals talking to some local dignitary. Breakfast was organized and, more to the point, people were appointed, both from the town and from the following, to organize the meals in future. Wals started establishing a household in the North Lord's residence. Again, he brought in people both from the town and from the following. By morning, they had a guard organized made up of the remains of the North Lord's guard and people taken from the following. There were three hundred of them. Illumina knew they would be useless in a fight just as likely to fight each other as anyone else. She was also sure the Captain of the Guard would soon arrive and they could not face him empty handed.
They placed the camps in such a way that the people of the following effectively guarded all the roads into Norton. There were nearly three thousand people round the road leading south to the junction with the Loro Road. Beyond that, the road went on to Sutton and the King's City. The Captain of the Guard was most likely to come down the Loro road, the only other route he could take would be across the northern plain much of which would be too wet for easy traveling. Illumina set watchers on the road and set about the business of binding people to Wals. She recruited people who could not hope for a similar position under the Captain. Those who were either opposed to him or tried to stay neutral, she drew on for material support for the following. She started spreading rumors that the Captain of the Guard would not reimburse anyone for anything give to the people of the Death March. People claimed to be in touch with him saying he would be arriving the next day and knew everything that was happening in Norton. In fact, no one had really heard from him it was all just stories made up by Illumina.
They had a quiet day, feeding the following three times, starting the process of planning how to disperse the following, waiting for the Captain to arrive.
Illumina's rumors seemed to be confirmed when the Captain obligingly turned up the next day. Wals and the supposedly loyal members of the North Lord's guard manned the walls of the town looking over the south road. Illumina, riding Cavalla and accompanied only by Brac, went out to meet the Captain. She stopped just twenty paces from the wall and waited for him to come to her.
Manueline and the others had been the rounds of the camps telling the people to remain seated until the Captain spoke to Illumina. Only then were they to stand and line the road either side of the captain and his men. The camps round the north road had also been told to walk to the south road and come up the road behind the captain as he rode to meet Illumina.
The Captain was contemptuous of the people huddled round the camps as he rode to meet the woman who came out of the town to meet him. He had heard some rumors of the events around Norton and the death of the North Lord but discounted them. Now he road up to the Norton gate with a hundred men behind him, having left another hundred on the Loro border to watch for the Prince who he believed was still hiding in the hills waiting for a chance to break through to the south. His confidence received its first blow when he recognized Illumina. He had seen her before and there was no mistaking the Margrave of Loro's daughter. He rode up to her with no thought in his mind other than the question of how she could come to be meeting him at the Norton gate.
She laughed as they met, greeting him by saying, "I believe you were looking for me?"
"You and the Prince." He replied grimly and then blinked in astonishment as he looked up at the wall and saw Wals. He looked down at Illumina. "What are you two doing here?"
"We came with the Death March. We traveled north and then east through the forest. We came to the river just as the Death March came through from the north. They believe the Prince is the personification of death. They believe this implicitly and will do anything he tells them." She began talking with a light expression on her face, her head back and to one side. As she talked, her head came down and she leveled her eyes at him, challenging him to defy her. She was apparently one small woman facing a hundred men or so he thought when he saw her waiting outside the gate. "Look around you. Look and you will see death in their eyes." She swept her hand round the crowd gathering around the captain and his men.
He did look. Looking for the first time, suddenly coming to a realization of the depths of the trap into which he had ridden.
He looked back at her and she shook her head. "Don't do anything rash Captain. These people don't care whether they die or not. If you touch me or make a move without my permission, they will literally tear you to pieces." As they stood confronting each other, people started pushing in amongst the horses. A couple of the men made some attempt at stopping them but it was useless. One man actually drew a saber. There was a scuffle. Several people were hurt. The saber was taken away and disappeared into the crowd.
The Captain sat twisted round on his horse watching as all this happened. More and more people were coming from the north side of the town. He turned back to Illumina, "Tell them to back off, get away from my men."
Illumina shook her head again. "I can't, they are a mob and no one can command them. Get off your horse and kneel to the new Lord of the North and I may be able to save them." As he hesitated she added in a harsh voice, "If you are going to do it, do it now, you haven't much time."
The Captain looked wildly around him for a moment; looking up at the man on the wall, at the people converging on his men from all around them, at the crowd making its way in amongst the horses and a look of blank despair came over him. He dismounted and knelt on the ground bowing his head to the man on the wall.
He was about to get up again, Illumina spoke, commanding him, "Stay where you are. If you value your life and the lives of your men don't move." She waved a hand to the people on the wall. The gate opened and a file of men armed with just sticks came out, making a passageway between Illumina and the gate. One by one, the Captain's men filed past her, extricating themselves from the reluctant crowd, being disarmed as they passed through the gate. In some cases, the guards from the gate had to rescue men who had become angry or otherwise offended the crowd. They all got to the gate and Brac started calling to the people of the following, telling them to go back to their camps. The midday meal would be ready, they should eat and rest. Soon they would be working to build their new homes.
Illumina never moved. Finally, the people all turned away from her and the kneeling Captain, going back to their camps and the promised food. Brac was involved in a conversation with one of the following talking about the new homes he mentioned. Only Wals still stood on the wall watching the scene below him. Illumina backed Cavalla away from the Captain. "You have no family here do you?"
He looked up at her and shook his head. "No, the North Lord would never allow it. I was allowed any casual relationships I chose but nothing permanent."
Illumina had been in contact with several of her father's Norton correspondents and gathered all kinds of information about the people of the town. "I heard a rumor that there was something permanent." The expression on the Captain's face confirmed something she had heard about a regular but secret liaison between the Captain and one of the women of the town. "We still need a Captain of the Guard. Are you willing to serve him?"
"Do I have any choice?"
"I think so. If you like, I will give you a letter to my father. He is always looking for good men and will give you a place if I ask him." She paused a while letting the implications of the offer sink in. "I think you have a better place here. You will be free to setup your own household. We need people who can help us with the dispersal of the Death March." She waved a hand at the countryside around them. "They must be given land and they must start planting before the summer is too far gone. Will you help us?"
The dispersal of the Death March took just ten days. They allocated two camps to each of twenty-five new villages established along the river that ran parallel to the Loro road. Traditionally, the population round the road was sparse because of the vulnerability to raids coming out of Loro. Overnight, the area went from being one of the most sparsely inhabited in the whole country to being one of the densest. The population of the North practically doubled. The new villages were given seed grain for planting. The granaries of Norton continued to feed them through the summer and the following winter. Wals and Illumina bought timber on their behalf and helped establish brick kilns to make bricks for houses. The planting came first, quickly followed by a building boom that saw over a thousand houses built through the summer. They recruited the North Lord's guard as builders. The guard became very proficient, able to construct an entire village, including making the bricks, in a matter of fifteen days.
Wals remarked to Illumina on one occasion, "They may not be much when it comes to a fight; they certainly build a decent house."
Illumina looked at him and laughed, "Don't worry; we'll deal with the fighting skills when the winter comes."
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JP Thompson (patrick@standingwaiting.com)