Territory

Upon learning of his situation from the old steward, Suleiman knew he was pressed for time.

Before heading to Deddings Town, he decided to inspect the territory under his rule, partly to stabilize the hearts of his people.

Suleiman did not want any mishaps to occur in his territory while he was away; he had to understand the state of his lands and the views of his subjects to plan his next steps.

He brought Old Nicken along, with Lushen and Roslyn following behind; this was their first time accompanying their lord to inspect his villages.

Even though these were places they had lived their entire lives, they remained uneasy, their hands gripping the hilts of their swords tightly out of nervousness.

Looking out, he saw only low-lying, uneven terrain, the ground sodden and everywhere filled with damp, soft mud and aquatic weeds that would cause one to lose their way upon entering.

This place is completely unfit for human habitation, let alone farming, Suleiman could not help but grumble to himself.

The scene before him looked more like a cluster of crude shacks, hastily erected from mud and weeds at the edge of the wetlands by a group of refugees desperate for survival.

These huts were suffocatingly low, their roofs covered in thick layers of weeds, and Suleiman doubted they could truly keep out the wind and rain.

The ground was a muddy mess, each step sinking deep into the mire, and the air was thick with the stench of rotting sludge peculiar to wetlands.

It reminded him of the time he first caught loaches in a creek; the smell of the silt that had covered his body made him want to retch, unable to endure it for even a moment.

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

Suleiman watched all of this with a complicated heart. This was his territory, and these were his subjects.

It was too miserable; Suleiman felt as if he had walked into a refugee camp.

"How is the harvest in our territory? Are there any other sources of income?"

Old Nicken sighed and said, "The harvest is barely enough to survive; in good seasons, we can save a tiny bit of surplus grain."

As for income: "We have almost none. We don't even have enough grain to feed ourselves, and no one else would spend money to buy our fish or shrimp."

Old Nicken suddenly added with a self-deprecating tone, "If aquatic weeds were valuable, we might be the wealthiest family in the Seven Kingdoms; we have enough weeds to drown King's Landing."

How is he supposed to develop this land? Suleiman pondered incessantly.

Just as he was observing the surrounding environment, a commotion broke out not far away, mixed with the cries of children and shouting.

Several ragged children were brawling together.

"Lushen, go separate them," Suleiman said to the guard behind him.

Lushen immediately stepped forward and, somewhat clumsily, pulled the brawling children apart.

"Why are you fighting?" Lushen shouted, trying to intimidate them.

The children, faces covered in snot and tears, looked timidly at the adult who had suddenly appeared with a sword at his waist, too afraid to speak for a moment.

One of them, bolder than the rest, pointed at another child and said with a tearful, aggrieved voice, "He drew the role of an Ironborn, but he cheated and started hitting people!"

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

Suleiman: "..."

Listening to the childish dispute, he felt a bitter ache in his heart.

Learning the reason for their argument left him with a complex mix of emotions.

These children did not even know the source of their own suffering.

The village was not large, and the crying of the children and the appearance of Suleiman and his group quickly drew attention.

A large crowd poured out from those low mud houses, looking toward them with curiosity and a hint of awe.

The vast majority of them were women and children, with only a few men who appeared quite elderly.

They were in rags, some subjects barely covered, and the children, regardless of gender, were stark naked.

Everyone was sallow and emaciated, yet they had distended bellies from hunger, their faces bearing the marks of years of toil and poverty.

It was too miserable; Suleiman could hardly bear to look at his own subjects.

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

The crowd watched him from afar, gazing with awe at Suleiman, the master of their land.

Just then, the sound of hurried footsteps came from the crowd.

A ragged woman, so thin she looked as if a gust of wind could blow her over, came stumbling toward them, clutching a child of about five or six years old tightly in her hand.

Her face was still streaked with tears, her body trembling with excitement, yet her eyes were fixed firmly on Suleiman, filled with agitation and gratitude.

It was the farm woman who had cried out to Suleiman outside the tower earlier—Old Hack's wife, the mother of the Little Hacks.

The child who had been pulled away by Lushen also looked at the woman rushing toward Suleiman with a face full of mud and tears, looking lost and bewildered.

As soon as the farm woman reached Suleiman, she seemed to have all her strength drained away, and with a thud, she knelt into the mud.

She knelt with such force that the child she was holding also tumbled, letting out a few cries of pain.

But the woman paid no mind; she knelt on the ground with the child in her hand, then pulled the other child whom Lushen had just separated over to kneel with them, bowing her head violently toward Suleiman.

"Lord Suleiman! Lord Suleiman!" The woman's voice was hoarse and trembling, filled with an incredible sense of gratitude.

With tears in her eyes, she looked up at Suleiman.

"Thank you, Lord Suleiman! Thank you, Lord Suleiman!" she said, kowtowing incessantly.

"You have saved our family! Without you, we would not have known how to go on living!"

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

"Children, you must remember the face of Lord Suleiman!" she choked out, tears flowing into her throat until her words became garbled.

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

Children of poor families grow up fast; they knew that when their mother brought home two generations' worth of grain that day, she was telling them they would not starve to death.

Because their father had fought bravely on the battlefield against the Ironborn, this was the grace bestowed by their lord, Suleiman, upon their heroically fallen father.

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

This was Lord Suleiman. The two children also kowtowed in excitement.

The peasant woman pointed at Suleiman, speaking loudly to the two children and the surrounding villagers.

Her body trembled with excitement.

"You must remember Lord Suleiman's kindness! You must! When you grow up, you must repay Lord Suleiman well! Just like your father!"

At the mention of their father, the woman's voice suddenly choked, and she could no longer speak, then she pulled the children down to kowtow again.

Immediately after, a long-suppressed cry erupted from the crowd.

The weeping spread from one person to another, quickly sweeping through everyone, the sound echoing and drifting throughout the entire village.

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

As they stood before the merciful Lord Suleiman, who had given them the compensation to survive their hardships.

Amidst the sobbing, one person after another knelt down.

The muddy ground was soon stained with tears.

"May the Seven bless Lord Suleiman!"

"The Seven will surely grant Lord Suleiman a good reward!"

"Lord Suleiman will surely live to be a hundred!"

All kinds of prayers and blessings intertwined, echoing over the wetland village.

They did not kneel out of fear, but out of gratitude, because that young lord had given them the hope to live at their most desperate hour.

Suleiman watched these subjects kneeling in the mud, weeping and praying to him.

A complex emotion welled up in his heart; he understood from the fused memories.

When his father went on the expedition, he had conscripted almost all the able-bodied male peasants in the territory.

Those fifteen peasant soldiers who followed the expedition involved every family in this tiny territory of only a few dozen people.

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

Therefore, by distributing everything his family owned to the families of the fallen, he, Suleiman, had effectively shared the compensation among every family in the village.

Those grains and copper coins.

In this extremely impoverished village, having lost their pillars and facing famine at any moment, it was enough to sustain them for at least the next few months, until the next planting and harvest.

Suleiman felt once again, profoundly, how difficult life was for the commoners in the world of Westeros.

Under the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, peasants were the property of the lord; military service was their duty, not a right.

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

He recalled asking Old Nicken before what the fate of the families of peasants who died for their lords was in other territories.

Old Nicken's gaze at the time had been full of resentment and confusion, as if to say he had asked a foolish question.

"If the wives of the fallen are unable to farm, their land is confiscated and given to tenants more capable of working it," Old Nicken had replied then.

Suleiman asked in shock, "Then what happens to the families of the fallen?"

Old Nicken thought for a moment, his tone as calm as if he were stating a self-evident truth: "The women and girls must marry whomever the lord designates, and the elderly and children must pay the 'Missing Man Tax' to the lord, otherwise the land is forfeited, and new male labor is brought in to take over the plot."

Suleiman was stunned. How could such conscripted peasants have any combat effectiveness? Once they died, they had nothing; their wives became someone else's, and the whole family waited to starve to death.

He could only lament once more the fate of the tenants, who, like the land, were property that the lord could dispose of at will.

Now, looking at the women and children kneeling in the mud, their eyes filled with tears and gratitude.

The reason they were so grateful to him was not because he had done something extraordinary, but because he had not, like other nobles, stripped them of their remaining land or forcibly controlled their marriages when they had lost everything.

He had merely given them what had already been earned by the sacrifices of their loved ones—things that would usually be swallowed by the lord in this world—and that was enough for them to view him as a merciful savior.

He said nothing more, knowing that even if he traveled far away, there would be no more problems, and simply stood for a while, watching these hopeful and grateful subjects.

Then, he turned around, said no more, and followed by Old Nicken and two guards, walked along the muddy path toward the tower.