bookandnovel Chapter 20: The Ghost and the Weight in the Longhouse
Chapter 20: The Ghost and the Weight in the Longhouse
The night in Blue Fork Valley was shrouded in a thick, oppressive heat that seemed to drip with moisture.
In the center of the longhouse in the Hohenzollern territory, the pine wood in the hearth had burned out, leaving only a few pieces of dark red charcoal clinging to life in the ashes, occasionally emitting a crisp crack that sounded particularly clear in the deathly silent room.
Otto Hohenzollern sat in the heavy oak chair. The wound on his left shoulder throbbed with heat and the tight bandage, but his pale face remained expressionless. His right hand held a tin goblet filled with the cheapest, even bran-covered, pale ale.
"Crunch—"
The heavy wooden door of the longhouse was pushed open a crack.
Raymond Frey, accompanied by two trusted men, strode in through the remaining mud on the pier, a mixture of river water and putrid silt. He fanned himself irritably with a silk handkerchief, complaining without restraint about the mosquitoes. The silk handkerchief seemed out of place in this setting, like something from the wrong place, appearing where it shouldn't be.
Raymond sat down on the bench opposite the fire pit. He didn't notice that the longhouse door had been silently closed from the outside by Pollifer after he entered, nor did he notice how lightly it closed, as if the door had never intended to be noticed.
"Hohenzollern! I thought there was some kind of fortified castle built here, but it's just a pile of stones!"
Raymond unbuttoned his collar, slumped onto the wooden stool, and fanned himself with a silk handkerchief. It was a fanning technique he had practiced for years, so much so that he didn't even realize he was fanning himself.
"Is the silver refined yet? The new wine list the Redwin family has put out in Fairmarket isn't waiting for my silver!"
"The silver is in the box, not a single ounce will be missing."
Otto's voice was deep and steady. He didn't get up, but simply tapped the table lightly with his right hand. The tapping echoed in the longhouse for a moment, then stopped.
"But before the handover, Lord Raymond, I must ask you to listen to the sounds of this land. Lately, some unclean things have been roaming the valley at night, keeping me awake."
Raymond paused for a moment, a genuine pause, not feigned. He had been thinking about the wine list when he spoke; his mind wasn't on it at all. Otto's words had pulled him out of his thoughts about the wine list, but he wasn't completely out of it; he was only halfway out.
"Bandits? That's your problem, knight. Count Jason of Seafront City gave you a heavy crossbow; you can't possibly be bothered with a few petty thieves—"
Before he could finish speaking, Otto suddenly stretched out his right hand and slammed the bottom of his cup three times on the wooden floor beneath his feet.
"Thump. Thump. Thump."
As soon as the sound ended, a chilling, suppressed, and hoarse wail suddenly came from beneath the previously silent floor.
"I'll talk! I'll talk! It was Raymond... Lord Raymond Frey... He took the money... He removed the sentry post... Please, stop rubbing salt into the wound..."
That was Ge Gen's voice. The agonizing sound of his wounds being soaked in salt water, trapped in the ventilated cellar directly below, pierced Raymond's eardrums through the cracks in the wooden planks. The voice was real, the broken voice that comes from being in extreme pain; it wasn't an act.
The flush on Raymond's face vanished instantly. He stood up abruptly, gripped by terror, his voice sharp and trembling.
"What...what are you doing?! You actually had someone fabricate such a vicious lie? You actually set up an execution ground in this longhouse, openly humiliating the reputation of Frey?!"
His two confidants took a step toward the door, an unnatural step, the kind of unnaturalness where a hand reaches for the sword but hasn't yet. They were waiting for Raymond's look, but Raymond hadn't given them one yet.
Otto's tone was colder than the river water on a long summer night, and every word was delivered with heavy emphasis.
"Sit down. If you want them to see the assassin in the cellar, the one hired by Tytos with your personal purse."
Otto pulled the small calfskin purse with the twin towers emblem from his pocket and tossed it onto the wooden table with a "thud." The silver coins inside clinked together, making a crisp sound that spread slowly through the quiet longhouse, long enough for everyone present to hear it.
Raymond stared intently at the money pouch, the one he'd taken from the Twins' treasury, a transaction he'd assumed would be spotless. His legs went weak; he felt it, but he didn't sit back down. He stood, using the support of his legs to keep himself from completely collapsing.
"That was...that was what Tethos forced me to do..."
Raymond's voice became weak, and that weakness wasn't feigned; something was sinking down in his throat, and that feeling dragged his voice down as well.
"He threatened me with that letter about the secret silver account... If I didn't cooperate, he would write to the old Marquis of Walder... Hohenzollern, you have to understand me, I can't refuse him..."
"I don't need to understand you, I just need you to make a choice."
Otto leaned forward slightly, the shadows casting a deep, cold light on his eyes. The dark red glow of the embers in the fire pit cast a deep red on the lower half of his face—a red that wasn't warm, but rather hot; the two things were not the same.
"The first option. Polliver has already prepared the horses. You can take these two attendants and run back to the Twins right now. But I guarantee that before then, this detailed statement and this money pouch will appear on your grandfather Marquis Walder's butler's desk. At that time, you will not only lose your ten percent of the profits, but you will also be hanged by old Walder himself on the flagpole of the Twin Towers for colluding with foreign enemies and sabotaging the family's shipping lanes."
Raymond's teeth began to chatter. He knew his grandfather all too well. Old Wade could tolerate greed, but he would never tolerate betrayal. That was the line that couldn't be crossed in their family. He knew it, he always knew it, but he thought he could make this happen outside that line. He never expected to be standing here, in this place where he could see that line right under his feet.
"The second option."
Otto tapped the money pouch on the table with his right index finger. The tap was softer but clearer than the previous three taps, as if he were speaking to a specific object.
"You'll stay here tonight. Tomorrow morning, you'll personally take this assassin and this confession to the Twins to see your uncle, Steve Ren. Follow the path I gave you—Tytus Blackwood attempted to bribe you to gain access to the Blue Fork waterway, which the Frey family considers their lifeblood. And you, for the sake of the family's honor, feigned agreement, actually luring Blackwood out. Ultimately, with the cooperation of your neighbor Otto, you successfully obtained evidence of Blackwood's transgression."
Raymond stared intently at Otto, whose freckled face looked even uglier than usual in the firelight, not out of fear, but because he was calculating at lightning speed. The calculations on his face were not aesthetically pleasing; he had never been an elegant calculator, but he was fast, one of the few things that had allowed him to survive in the Frey family.
"You mean... this was all part of Tethos's ulterior motives regarding the Blue Fork River waterway, and I, for the sake of the family's long-term peace, orchestrated a trap to capture this black raven?"
"Just as you said, Lord Raymond."
Otto's face appeared cold and clear in the dim firelight. He let Raymond speak for himself, because the words spoken by him carried a different weight in Raymond's mind than the words he was told. The moment he spoke, he was already standing in that direction.
"By doing this, you will not only transform from a suspect into a hero who defends the family against external aggression, but you can also legitimately propose to your grandfather that the family must strengthen patrols in the upstream waterways to prevent such incidents from happening again. And I, as a grateful party, will formally transfer the portion of the profits originally given to you to the Frey family as a security tax."
Raymond mentally retraced the route. When he reached Uncle Stevieren, he paused. He knew his uncle too well. What Stevieren valued most wasn't face, but actual control of the Twins' waterways. If he could bring evidence, a story that could shut old Walder up, and a stable monthly security tax agreement, Stevieren would have no reason not to speak up for him.
"Uncle Steveren... he values the family's interests in the river above all else."
Raymond swallowed hard, his tone now completely following the path Otto had given him. He knew it, but he had no choice, because that path led to survival, and he had already considered what the other paths led to.
"If I go with this formal proposal for a security tax, he will definitely speak on my behalf to my grandfather."
"Very good. It seems you've regained the shrewdness expected of a Frey."
Otto stood up, a sharp pain shooting through his left shoulder wound the instant he rose, but he didn't let the pain show. He straightened up, walked over to Raymond, and spoke in a low voice, as if to Raymond alone.
"Go. Tomorrow in the Twins' main hall, you will be the star. As for me, I am merely a lowly knight willing to sacrifice myself for my lord's gain. As long as this charade is performed well, no one on the Blue Fork River will be able to touch the Frey family's interests."
Raymond nodded hurriedly. He looked at Otto, his eyes no longer showing the arrogance of before, but not entirely awe either. It was something more complex, the kind of complexity that comes from someone who is beginning to realize that he has been completely outmaneuvered by someone smarter than himself, but the outcome of that outmaneuvering is not bad for him.
The late summer night wind finally swept into the house, dispelling the heavy smell of blood.
Otto sat back down in his chair, watching Pollifer's busy figure move rhythmically in the firelight—the rhythm of someone who already knew what they were doing. Resources, lives, laws—in this ledger called survival, he had just forcibly transformed the thousands of Frey family members into a fence protecting this black eagle as it metamorphoses in the mud, at minimal cost.
As for Blackwood, Tytos Blackwood will soon discover that what he bought with his five hundred silver deer was not the destruction of Otto, but another shackle on his family's chessboard in the Riverlands.
The night wind briefly lit the last few pieces of charcoal in the hearth, then dimmed, and the light in the longhouse grew weaker, but it didn't go out completely; it remained there, very faint, but still there.