The Lands

After learning his circumstances from the old steward, Suleiman knew he was short on time.

Before heading to Deddings Town, he decided to inspect the land under his rule, both to get a sense of it and to steady his people.

Suleiman didn't want anything to happen in his lands while he was away. He had to understand their condition and what his people thought of him before he could plan his next move.

He brought Old Nicken along, with Lushen and Roslyn following behind. This was their first time accompanying their lord on an inspection of his village.

Even though this was the place where they'd spent their whole lives, they still felt uneasy, nervously gripping the long swords at their waists.

As far as the eye could see, the land was low and uneven, the soil damp, and muddy ground and water grass that could easily lead someone astray were everywhere.

This place isn't fit for people to live in, let alone farm, Suleiman couldn't help thinking.

The sight before him looked more like a cluster of crude shelters hastily built from mud and water grass by refugees forced to survive on the edge of the wetlands.

The huts were so low they felt suffocating, their roofs covered in thick water grass. Suleiman wondered if they could really keep out the wind and rain.

The ground was a quagmire, and every step sank unevenly beneath his feet. The air was filled with the characteristic stench of rotting muck from the wetlands.

It reminded him of the stench of mud that had covered him the first time he caught loaches in a stream. It had made him gag; he hadn't been able to stand it for a moment.

Yet these people had lived here all their lives, for generations.

Suleiman looked at it all with mixed feelings. This was his land. These were his people.

It was so wretched that Suleiman felt as if he'd wandered into a refugee camp.

"How are the harvests in our lands? Are there any other sources of income?"

Old Nicken sighed. "The harvest is barely enough to get by. In a good season, we can save a little grain."

As for income, "We have practically none. We don't even have enough grain to feed ourselves, and nobody would pay to buy our fish and shrimp."

Old Nicken suddenly gave a self-deprecating laugh. "If water grass were worth anything, we might be the richest family in the Seven Kingdoms. We have enough of it to flood King's Landing."

How was he supposed to develop this land? Suleiman kept turning the question over in his mind.

As he surveyed the surroundings, a commotion rose nearby, mixed with children's cries and shouts.

Several raggedly dressed children were brawling.

"Lushen, go break them up," Suleiman told the guardsman behind him.

Lushen immediately stepped in, awkwardly pulling apart the children who were fighting.

"Why are you fighting?" Lushen shouted, trying to scare them into answering.

The children were covered in snot and tears. They stared timidly at the adult who'd suddenly appeared, a long sword at his waist, and didn't dare speak.

One of them was a little braver. Pointing at another child, he complained through his tears, "He drew the Ironborn role, but he cheated and started hitting people!"

The child being pointed at roared, "I want to be Lord Suleiman's soldier! I want to fight for Lord Suleiman!"

Suleiman: "..."

Listening to the children's childish argument, he felt a bitter ache in his heart.

When he learned what they were arguing over, he was overcome with conflicting emotions.

These children had no idea where their suffering came from.

The village was small, and the children's cries and Suleiman's arrival quickly drew attention.

A crowd poured out of the low mud houses, watching with curiosity and a trace of awe.

Most of them were women and children. Only a handful of the men looked old.

They were dressed in rags, and some villagers were barely clothed. The children, boys and girls alike, were naked.

Everyone was gaunt, yet had the swollen bellies of the starving. Their faces bore the marks of years of hard labor and poverty.

It was too wretched. Suleiman could hardly bear to look at his people.

They recognized Suleiman at a glance—the young lord of Foulkeep, who had just returned from Seaguard and was said to have risen from the dead.

From a distance, they gazed at him with reverence: the lord of their land.

Just then, hurried footsteps sounded from within the crowd.

A raggedly dressed woman, so thin that a gust of wind might knock her down, came rushing over, stumbling as she went. She clutched the hand of a child who looked about five or six.

Tears still streaked her face, and her body trembled with excitement. Her eyes were fixed on Suleiman, full of gratitude and joy.

She was the peasant woman who had wept and pleaded with Suleiman outside the tower before: Old Hack's wife and Little Hack's mother.

The child Lushen had pulled away was also there, covered in mud and tears, staring blankly at the woman who had rushed up to Suleiman.

As soon as the woman reached Suleiman, it was as if all her strength left her. She dropped to her knees in the mud.

She fell so abruptly that the child whose hand she held tumbled too, crying out in pain.

But the woman paid no attention. Still holding one child's hand, she knelt in the mud, then pulled the child Lushen had just separated from the others down beside them. Together, they bowed again and again to Suleiman.

"Lord Suleiman! Lord Suleiman!" Her voice was hoarse and trembling, filled with disbelief and gratitude.

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked up at him.

"Thank you, Lord Suleiman! Thank you, Lord Suleiman!" she said, bowing over and over.

"You saved our family! Without you, we wouldn't know how to go on living!"

She wept, then turned to the two children beside her.

"Children, you must remember what Lord Suleiman looks like!" she sobbed. Her tears ran down her throat, making her words hard to understand.

"Remember! This is Lord Suleiman! This is the benefactor who saved our family!"

Children from poor families grew up fast. They knew that their mother had come home happily that day with two generations' worth of grain and told them they wouldn't starve to death.

Their father had fought bravely on the battlefield against the Ironborn. The grain was a reward from Lord Suleiman for their father, who had died bravely in battle.

She had kept telling them that Lord Suleiman had saved them, and when they grew up, they should fight for him just like their father!

This was Lord Suleiman. The two children, too, began bowing to him in excitement.

The woman pointed at Suleiman and shouted to her children and the villagers gathered around them.

Her body trembled uncontrollably with excitement.

"Remember Lord Suleiman's kindness! You must! When you grow up, you must repay him properly! Just like your father!"

At the mention of their father, the woman's voice caught in her throat. She couldn't say another word. Then she pulled the children close and bowed to Suleiman again.

A moment later, long-suppressed sobs burst from the crowd.

The weeping spread from one person to the next, swiftly sweeping over them all. Their cries echoed through the village.

These were women and children who had lost husbands, sons, and fathers.

As they stood before the kind Lord Suleiman, who had given them relief to help them through their hardship—

one after another, they fell to their knees amid the sobbing.

Tears soon soaked the muddy ground.

"May the Seven bless Lord Suleiman!"

"The Seven will surely reward Lord Suleiman for his kindness!"

"May Lord Suleiman live a hundred years!"

Prayers and blessings of every kind mingled together, echoing above the wetland village.

They weren't kneeling out of fear, but gratitude. When they had been at their most desperate, the young lord had given them hope that they could keep living.

Suleiman looked at his people, kneeling in the mud as they wept and prayed for him.

A complicated feeling welled up in his heart. From the memories he'd inherited, he understood.

When his father had marched to war, he'd conscripted nearly every able-bodied young man in the lands.

Those fifteen peasant soldiers who had gone to war represented almost every family in this tiny holding of only a few dozen people.

Thirteen of them had died. Lushen and Roslyn were the only survivors.

So when Suleiman had distributed everything the family owned among the families of the fallen, it was as if he had paid compensation to every family in the village.

That grain and those copper coins—

in this desperately poor village, which had lost its breadwinners and faced famine at any moment, were enough to help them get by for at least the next few months, until the next planting and harvest.

Once again, Suleiman felt just how hard life was for the common people of Westeros.

Under the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, farmers were their lord's property. Fighting in war was their duty, not a right.

Their lives and the fruits of their labor belonged to their lord.

He remembered asking Old Nicken what happened to the families of farmers who died fighting for their lords in other lands.

At the time, Old Nicken had looked at him with resentment and confusion, as if he'd asked the stupidest question imaginable.

"If a fallen man's wife can't work the land, her fields are taken from her and given to villagers better able to farm them," Old Nicken had answered.

Suleiman had pressed him in shock. "Then what happens to the families of the fallen?"

Old Nicken had thought for a moment, then replied in a tone as calm as if he were stating the obvious. "The women and girls have to marry whoever the lord appoints. The old and the children have to pay the lord the Missing Man Tax. Otherwise, their land is seized and given to a new male laborer to work."

Suleiman had been stunned. Could conscripted farmers really fight? If they died, they lost everything. Their wives became someone else's wives, and their whole families were left to starve.

He could only lament once more that the villagers' lives, like the land itself, were property their lord could dispose of as he pleased.

Now, looking at the women and children before him, kneeling in the mud with tears and gratitude in their eyes—

he understood why they were so grateful to him. It wasn't because he'd done anything extraordinary. It was because, unlike other nobles, he hadn't taken away the little land they had left when they'd lost everything, or forced them into marriages against their will.

All he'd done was give them something that should have belonged to them in the first place—something their lost loved ones had earned through their sacrifice, but that lords in this world usually took for themselves. That alone was enough for them to see him as a merciful savior.

He said nothing more. He knew there wouldn't be any trouble while he was away. He simply stood there for a while, looking at his people, their hearts full of hope and gratitude.

Then he turned and walked away without another word, Old Nicken and the two guards following him along the muddy path toward the tower.