Chapter 3 - The Duke’s Due

  “When the snow falls, the wolf and the taxman hunt alike.”

  — A Rhyme of Bitter Harvests

  The summons came before first light, when the air y blue and uncommitted between darkness and dawn. Frost quivered at every windowpane, tracing white veins across gss. Eike woke to Grayna’s knock—three sharp, then one soft, a pattern half the vilge knew by dread-fueled rote.

  “Up,” she hissed through the cracked door. “Rend’s booked the storehouse. Wants us counted—grain, mules, breath in the lungs if we’ve any to spare.”

  Lucy barely stirred in her pallet, face shiny with sweat. Eike tugged on boots stiff as pnks, feeling his toes throb and curl against the cold, then shrugged on his coat. In the silence, he could hear the world itself hold a brittle breath.

  They made their way through snow so fine it creaked—each footfall another small surrender. Around them, others shadowed the nes, hunched figures clutching baskets or sacks, heads bowed as if against invisible blows. The sky overhead was a shuttered lid; no hint of sun, only the sullen promise of fresh drifts.

  At the old storehouse, folk gathered in a muddled herd. The stone walls loomed, bck with soot, eaves dripping icicles fat as a Noblewoman’s ringers. Master Rend stood at the doors, arms crossed broad across his jerkin, eyes the color of blued steel. His men fanned out behind, tally-sticks ccking—a cricketsong of threat.

  Eike recognized most faces, but what struck him anew was how small they seemed in the Duke’s shadow. Hunched, gray about the eyes, every soul bled of warmth.

  A stir ran through the crowd—parting as the Duke himself arrived, astride a horse the color of dirty snow. Jargev looked less myth now, more flesh pressed tight against discomfort. Furs wrapped him in yers—a walking mound of shaved pelts and antique authority. Only his face showed: grained with fatigue, lips thin as cut ste. Eyes searching, restless, as if hunting for both threat and absolution.

  Whispers rippled. Some tried not to look. Others, bolder or more broken, stared as if memorizing the lines that ruled their days.

  “He’s smaller than the stories,” Grayna muttered, sharp as a frostbitten bde.

  “Hemmed in same as us,” Eike replied. He gnced down at his numb fingers. Was it pity, or envy, gnawing at him? He couldn’t tell—only that both left the same bitter taste behind.

  Jargev’s gaze flitted over them, never lingering. He spoke—a voice unused to warmth, each word measured out like flour during famine.

  “Folk of Winter Cw. The King’s need grows heavy. The quotas stand—by my hand and by God’s. Render what you have. Hold none back. It is the price of peace, and of your own keeping.”

  He said no more. With a curt nod to Rend, Jargev wheeled his horse. The beast stamped, breath frosting the air, then trudged away down the white ne. Only his men remained, their shadows stretched long across the snow.

  Inside, process stripped all softness from the morning. One by one, families brought forward their sacks—turnips pitted with frost, beans rattling hollow in the bottom, roots curled and bckened with rot. The scale hung on its chain, battered copper bowl catching each offering, weighing not only food but the thin edge of hope.

  Master Rend watched, lips stitched to a perpetual frown. His hands—broad, marked with healed cuts—rested on the ledger.

  “Name,” he barked.

  “Gralin, from the croft west side,” a man muttered, eyes averted. “Brought what we scraped yesterday.”

  Rend pinched a handful from the sack, inspected it—a farmer’s handful, measuring both trust and grit. “Less than your tithe. Marked short.”

  A pause. Gralin shifted, pride warring with terror. “We lost half the patch in rot, ser. The soil won’t—”

  Rend held up a hand. Ft, absolute. “Shortfall’s on you. Mark it well. I collect for his Grace, not myself. Appeals go to the proper ear, not mine.”

  He made a note. The sack joined the growing pile—offerings to the mouth that would never fill.

  Grayna nudged Eike forward. His fingers left smears of dirt on the sack he carried; inside, his best, which was meager still. As he stepped to the scale, Rend’s eyes settled on him—ft, detached, like a butcher scrubbing fat from his hands after the st carcass is hung.

  “Eike. Two in the house, that right?”

  He nodded. “Aye. Sister’s sick.”

  Rend’s stare lingered, just long enough to make the words heavy. “Quotas stand, sick or no. You’re old enough to work the fields. She, old enough to eat. You’ll find a way.”

  He poured the contents onto the scale. The dial barely moved.

  “That all?”

  Eike spread his hands. No lies left in his marrow. “Earth’s frozen three spans down. Roots snap against the stone—nothing grows this deep into winter.”

  Rend grunted, not unkind but not moved either. “Life stops, too, if the Duke’s dues aren’t met. You want hunger, look north. Those vilges are dust and teeth. Winter’s not a negotiator.”

  He scribbled a note, rummaged a scarred hand through the basket, then sent Eike off with half his own tithe cut again—what remained less than a child’s meal.

  Beside him, Grayna’s words leaked out, venom wrapped in cloth. “If the Duke wanted stones, they’d have us boil the walls next.”

  “Watch your tongue,” Eike muttered, clutching the tiny yield.

  Behind them, an old woman pleaded. “It’s the st, ser! My boy’s gone—took by the cough—”

  “Mark her as short, Rilm,” Rend said to his scribe, not meeting her eyes. “Dues are owed, still.” The old woman sagged, folding around her grief like cloth around a brittle stick.

  Others fared no better. Sacks vanished, hands emptied, debts tallied in ink none there could read.

  Each cut and measure stripped bark from the day—yer by yer, every heart bared to the cold, one season more. Rend moved in the tireless rhythm of a man driven by duty, jaw clenched, eyes averted. Cruelty crept in, not of intent but as a weed does through frozen soil—unnoticed until it takes root.

  Through it all, vilgers watched the tally grow, hope shrinking in inverse proportion. In a corner, Amalia drifted, quiet as moss, pressing a crust into a child’s palm, murmuring comfort too soft for official ears.

  When at st the ledger snapped shut and the scales swung empty, Master Rend raised his head. “Any holdouts will find steeper debt by dusk. If not paid in food, then in service. Understood?”

  Silence. One or two nodded, most simply shivered, eyes fixed to the cracks in the fgstones.

  The barn emptied in slow, shamed tides. Outside, the colorless sky yielded a fresh flurry; fkes twisted slow as embers. Eike paused at the threshold, squinting into the wind. His muscles ached with old rage, heavy as the stones beneath his boots.

  He pictured wrenching the ledger from Rend’s hand, hurling it to the fgstones, the tallies scattering like chaff. He’d pay for it in blood, no doubt—he could almost taste iron on his tongue. Not today, he told himself. Not yet.

  “Come,” Grayna said, pulling his coat sleeve. “Better to grumble with a mouth full of what’s left than with the wind.”

  He snorted, biting back the words that ached to unfurl. Snow’s not the only thing that bites, he thought, heading back into the white, the little sack pressed hard to his chest.

  As they crossed the yard, voices rose in muted protest behind them—a woman cursing the King’s name, the sp of a hand on wood, a child’s thin wail.

  Amalia passed them, shawl tucked firm around her shoulders. She met Eike’s eyes, giving a nod that was something between apology and stubbornness.

  He found himself stopping. “You believe it’ll ever change?”

  Amalia’s gaze was steady. “Systems make monsters of men. Sometimes. But men break, and mend, too. Remember roots through stone.” She passed on, boots silent in the falling snow.

  Grayna shook her head, mouth twisting. “Hope’s a fool’s bnket. Holes in it everywhere.”

  Eike said nothing. He watched the snow close over the footprints, the sky lowering itself like a shroud. Inside, the anger pressed down, not red and wild but cramped—a coal forced to gutter but not quite die.

  At his door, the world shrank—home now a burrow, fireless, the only warmth the pitiful lump he pressed to his chest. He slipped inside, tching the door tight against the wind and memory.

  Lucy blinked up from her pallet—cheeks sunken, eyes sharp as ever. “Did they take it all?”

  Eike knelt beside her, the words catching behind his teeth, thick and splintered. “All they could carry. Left just enough for us to spit in the wind.”

  She smiled, wan and mischievous both. “We’ll spit twice, then.”

  He ruffled her hair, swallowed the ache that pressed behind his tongue. “Aye,” he whispered. “Twice and again.”

  He set the meager bundle near the fire, offering a crumb to the coals. The crackle seemed barely louder than a whisper. Still, he listened to it, letting the sound burrow in—thin as it was, it was enough.

  Winter pressed in, close as an enemy’s breath. Eike’s hands, empty though they were, curled into fists, knuckles whitened with resolve. Let them count their dues, he thought. What matters I’ll keep—tight as stone, quiet as snowfall, waiting out the cold.