Game of Thrones: The Impaler of the Blue Fork

Chapter 73: White Frost

The snow in the Blue Fork Valley was blown into hard ridges by the north wind that had been blowing for three days, like white ribs growing out of the ground.

The layer of yellow ice mixed with quicklime and sewage in the sewer was broken open this morning with a pickaxe.

It was frozen so solid that when the pickaxe hit it, sparks flew, and the rebound force made my hand ache.

The ice was broken because most of the underground currents were frozen, preventing filth from seeping into the riverbed. Instead, it began to accumulate at the canal mouth and froze into lumps of ice that emitted a sour stench at night.

Four refugees, dressed in thin linen clothes, were taking turns standing in a knee-deep snowdrift, gritting their teeth and pounding down.

Every time the pickaxe tip broke through a bit of the ice shell, the foul-smelling ice shards were shoveled into the wooden bucket next to it.

Supervisor Polliff stood a few steps away upwind.

His hands were tucked into the sleeves of his sheepskin coat, his shoulders were hunched, and his eyes were fixed on the ice shards that had been cut out.

"Drill down another half foot, and stop when you reach the bottom of the flowing water layer."

Polliver's voice trembled slightly in the cold wind, not out of sympathy, but because the chill had seeped into the soles of his boots.

"All done. Go to fire pit number two and get half a bowl of hot soup. No meat."

The refugees remained silent, only the muffled sound of picks striking the ice served as their response.

They knew that in this winter, strangled by both heavy snow and lockdown, a bowl of hot soup without ice was the best the territory could offer.

Pollifer turned and walked toward the stone tower.

His steps were somewhat heavy, because of the increasingly thinning ledger in his mind.

In the room at the bottom of the stone tower, the fire in the charcoal brazier burned very weakly.

In order to save charcoal, Otto ordered that the heating fuel for all the stone chambers be reduced by 30%.

The current temperature is just enough to keep people from freezing, but it's definitely not warm.

Otto sat behind the stone table, flipping through the parchment scroll containing details of the territory's inflows and outflows with his right hand.

The door was pushed open, and Pollifer walked in, bringing with him a chill.

He walked to a spot three steps away from the desk and stopped, bowing his head slightly.

"grown ups."

Pollifer began his report.

"The caravan from Haijiang City delivered supplies for the next two weeks yesterday evening. Three carts of oats, one cart of pig iron, and half a cart of coarse salt."

"Accounts".

Otto did not look up.

"They took 50% of the silver mine's output this month, and also deducted the remaining 50% as their 'commission'."

Pollifer took a deep breath, his voice dry and strained with a hint of gritted teeth.

"But the oats they sent were mixed with 20% wheat bran and sand. The quality of the pig iron was barely good enough to make farm tools, and... the price had increased by almost one and a half times compared to the fall."

Pollifer's knuckles were white from exertion.

"Earl Jason's men say that heavy snow has blocked the roads, causing freight costs to rise. In addition, the Blackwood family's scouts are roaming the Riverlands to the south, requiring the caravan to have three times the number of guards. These extra expenses will have to be deducted from our accounts."

Haijiang City controls the only safe passage through the Blue Fork River.

They don't need to send troops to fight you; they only need to write a few words and use the pretext of "transportation fees" and "protection fees" to slowly drain the profits mined from the silver mine, exchanging them for a bunch of poor-quality rations that barely keep people from starving.

"How long can these three cartloads of grain feed the more than five hundred mouths in the territory?"

Otto finally looked up from the parchment and onto Poliffer's face.

"Adding to the stock in the cellar, and the dead fish caught by breaking the ice on the river..."

Without hesitation, Pollifer gave the death line he had calculated countless times.

"If we want to keep those thirty militiamen on the training ground from starving to the point of weakness, we can only last for a month and ten days at most. After a month, if we can't use real money to buy good grain that isn't mixed with sand from the south, we'll only be able to boil tree bark in the camp's pots."

Otto remained silent.

The wind outside the window whistled through the cracks in the stone, making a low, mournful sound.

Otto closed his eyes, and the image of the dark, damp attic in Braavos flashed through his mind, along with his father's face, coughing up black blood from tuberculosis.

"If you seek a living from others, you'll always be a beggar."

The father's hoarse voice seemed to pierce through more than a decade of time, echoing in the cold stone chamber.

Otto opened his eyes, his gray-blue pupils filled with only a deathly coldness.

"Polliver, go and prepare two shovels."

Midnight.

The wind and snow were stronger than during the day, and the snowflakes, like fine grains of salt, stung my face.

The old elm tree at the edge of the Blue Fork River bend was reduced to a blurry black outline in the wind and snow.

The tree trunk is thick and cracked, like a silent giant guarding the soil below, which is frozen harder than pig iron.

Otto and Pollifer trudged through the snow, one step at a time, until they reached the old elm tree.

They did not bring torches.

The two of them could only make out the snow-covered stone slab on one side of the tree roots by the faint light of the snow.

"dig."

Otto took the shovel with his right hand and plunged the tip hard into the frozen soil at the edge of the stone slab.

"Click!"

The shovel emitted a piercing, mournful sound, and only a small piece of frozen soil, about the size of a fingernail, was broken open.

The force of the rebound made Otto's right arm go numb and twitch violently.

But he didn't stop; he picked up the shovel again and smashed it down.

Pollifer didn't ask why they were digging up tree roots in this awful weather.

He picked up the shovel and, following Otto's rhythm, began to gnaw at the rock-solid frozen ground, shovel by shovel.

Half an hour later, their breathing became heavy and labored, and their exhaled breath condensed into icy mist in front of them.

A shallow trench was finally cleared from the frozen soil around the stone slab.

Otto dropped the shovel, grabbed the edge of the slab with one hand, and Pollifer rushed over to help.

With their combined efforts, accompanied by a dull groan, they pried the heavy stone slab aside.

Below is a deep pit completely covered with tar and moisture-proof cloth.

Otto crouched down and, with his fingers, which were a little stiff from the cold, slowly peeled away the moisture-proof cloth covering the surface, revealing the tin box inside covered with dark red rust.

The box had no lock, only a tight latch.

"Click".

The latch was pried open.

Otto lifted the lid of the box.

There was no glitter of jewels, nor the awe-inspiring sight of chests overflowing with gold and silver.

By the faint light of the snow, Pollifer could see at the bottom of the box that only a small money pouch, wrapped in rough linen, remained, less than half its base. Scattered beside it were several yellowed and brittle discarded receipts bearing the emblem of the Braavos Iron Treasury.

Otto reached into the money bag, untied the rope, and poured its contents onto the snow-covered stone slab.

"Jingle bells..."

A dull, metallic clanging sound rang out.

Those were about seventy or eighty pure gold dragons cast in the old town.

Each piece bears the marks of time and oxidation, some even covered in dried mud, emitting a mixed smell of aged moisture-proofing oil and moldy leather.

This was the money his father, Albrecht Hohenzollern, had saved by working as a mercenary and bodyguard in a foreign land, enduring tuberculosis and groveling for half his life, earning it through countless battles.

This was also the last completely clean transaction of hard currency in the world for the Hohenzollern family, after their previous two trips to Seafront City and Fair City to buy iron and seeds, and it was not subject to the supervision of any major nobles.

Pollifer looked at the gold coins, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Pack it up."

Otto didn't count the gold coins.

He glanced at them, then closed the empty tin box again, pushed it back into the pit, and began filling it with soil.

Pollifer carefully put the gold coins back into his purse and tucked them into the innermost layer of his fur coat.

The money pouch was icy cold, but when pressed against my heart, it gave me a sense of solid weight.

"Sir, this money..."

Pollifer kept his voice down as he filled the hole.

"Is it for buying grain in the south?"

"No. Food can only keep us from starving, but it can't buy dignity, nor can it buy the knife to break the deadlock."

Otto placed the last piece of frozen mud on the stone slab and stomped it down heavily with his boots.

"Don't touch a single penny of this money. Hide it in a hidden compartment in the inner stone wall of the fortress, where only you and I know."

Pollifer froze, his shovel motion halting in mid-air.

He couldn't understand why, if they were facing a food shortage, they would hide the money that was meant to save their lives again.

"The chains of the great nobles are woven from ledgers. As long as our accounts show poverty and we are still relying on their handouts of coarse wheat, they will feel that everything is under control."

Otto turned around, his grey-blue eyes revealing a clear-headedness amidst the wind and snow.

"These seventy-odd gold dragons are not for buying wheat. They are for hiring a sword to pierce their throats on the day the ice melts, when they think we are too weak to harvest us."

"Before this, even if all that's left in the camp is tree bark, even if someone starves to death in the moat, this money must never be exposed."

Pollifer shivered.

But he did not refute it.

He lowered his head slightly, replied "Yes, sir," clutched the money pouch tightly, and followed Otto toward the inner fortress shrouded in snow.

The next morning, in the outer trading area.

The wind and snow lessened a bit, but the air was dry and cold, like a knife.

Several small traders who had managed to bypass the Blackwood blockade from the south were hawking cheap nails and blackened salt under makeshift wooden sheds in the trading area, wrapped in tattered felt blankets.

Pollifer, accompanied by two inspectors, came here routinely to collect a meager market transaction tax.

Instead of the money bag containing the golden dragon, he carried half a jar of inferior fish oil boiled from his territory, intending to exchange it with these merchants for a few usable short axes.

"You think you can trade this little bit of fish oil for my iron axe?"

A stubble-faced merchant shouted exaggeratedly.

"Sir, look at the sky, and look at the road to the south! The Blackwood family's scouts are now hunting even the wild ducks on the riverbank. I risked my life to bring this iron here!"

Pollifer frowned, offering no bargaining, and simply said coldly, "Then take your junk and go back south."

When the merchant saw that Pollifer was about to leave, he quickly grabbed him, lowered his voice, and revealed a mysterious fear on his face.

"Don't be in such a hurry, Steward! Iron Axe is easy to deal with, I just want to get some definite information..."

The merchant looked around to make sure the two inspectors were far away before leaning close to Polliff's ear, his voice trembling as if he were uttering some terrible curse.

"There are rumors circulating in several villages to the south that crops don't grow on the land of Lanchahe at all, and people live by eating human flesh."

The merchant swallowed hard, his eyes filled with genuine fear.

"Some people say... that Baron Hohenzollern is a monster cursed by the Old Gods. Every night, he disembowels those who have fled and believe in the Old Gods, drains their blood, and uses it to water the seven-pointed star in the sanctuary..."

Pollifer stopped in his tracks.

He turned his head and looked at the shivering merchant.

"Bullshit! Where did this nonsense come from?"

Pollifer snapped at him, but he felt no anger, only a chill.

"I...I just heard it from a passing mercenary!"

The small-time merchant was so frightened that he took two steps back.

"Not only in the south, but even in the taverns of the city's lower district, there are people drunkenly singing little tunes about 'Baron Otto the Vampire'!"

Pollifer ignored him and did not go to exchange the iron axe.

He strode back to the inner fortress, his boots crunching rapidly on the hard, frozen ground.

He knew that the poison from Blackwood had already seeped in with the wind and snow.