Chapter 49: Villages Are Falling
For the next several days, the word "refugee" disappeared from Raymond’s administrative vocabulary almost as quickly as it had entered it.
The eighty-seven survivors from Marden were absorbed into Althoff with surprising speed. The blacksmiths were given the old eastern forge and immediately began repairing farming tools, wagon fittings, broken hinges, and several dozen spearheads Boris had quietly set aside for refurbishment.
The carpenters joined the housing crews and spent most of their time crawling through abandoned structures, marking buildings that could still be salvaged and condemning those that would collapse under heavy snow.
The hunters began accompanying Boris’s patrols almost immediately, while the leatherworkers took over one of the smaller work sheds beside the storage yards and started processing the Ironhorn Elk hides and Frostfang Wolf pelts that had been piling up since the first hunting expedition.
Even the herbalists found themselves busy after Marianne introduced them to the women who had traditionally handled basic medicine inside Althoff. Within less than a week, the people who had arrived half-frozen at the gate were no longer standing apart from the rest of the town.
They were working beside them, eating beside them, sleeping beneath the same roofs, and complaining about the same freezing wind.
Raymond would have been perfectly satisfied if the situation had ended there.
It did not.
The second refugee group arrived four days after Marden. There were one hundred and twenty-six of them.
They came from a northern farming settlement called Greymill, located beyond the old dry riverbed roughly thirty kilometers northeast of Althoff.
Unlike the Marden survivors, these people hadn’t waited until their village was physically destroyed.
Their headman had seen enormous herds abandoning the old migration corridor, watched Frostfang Wolves appear around the outskirts three nights in a row, and made the decision to evacuate before the settlement became trapped.
Raymond initially considered the man either exceptionally intelligent or exceptionally cowardly until the refugees revealed that Greymill had been overrun less than a day after they left.
Two days later, another group arrived.
Then another.
By the end of the first week, Althoff’s northern gate had stopped feeling like the boundary of an isolated wasteland barony and started looking like the entrance to a crowded roadside shelter. Families came dragging sledges made from doors and broken tables.
Hunters carried injured relatives on crude stretchers. People arrived with goats, chickens, bundles of tools, sacks of grain, half-frozen children, and whatever pieces of their old lives they had been able to carry before running.
Some groups numbered fewer than twenty. Others arrived in the hundreds. Guards were forced to establish a permanent reception post near the northern gate, complete with heating braziers, hot water, emergency blankets, and a small examination area where Marianne’s growing medical team could separate severe injuries from simple exhaustion.
The population climbed rapidly.
[ Total Population: 1,287 / 5,000 ]
[ Total Population: 1,612 / 5,000 ]
Raymond was staring at that number from behind his desk when Marianne placed another stack of registration ledgers in front of him.
His expression immediately darkened. "Please tell me those are copies."
Marianne remained standing beside the desk with both hands folded neatly in front of her. "They are not copies, my Lord. Those are this morning’s registrations."
Raymond stared at the stack, then at her. "How many?"
"Three hundred and two."
His eyes slowly widened. "Three hundred and two people arrived this morning?"
"Between last night and midday," Marianne corrected calmly. "They came in three separate groups. One hundred and forty-eight from Darlow Village, ninety-one from the western hamlets around Old Fen, and sixty-three from the northern road. Some of the northern survivors originally belonged to other settlements, so Lily is still sorting out their household records."
Raymond leaned back heavily in his chair and rubbed both hands over his face. "Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I finally solve a famine for twelve hundred people, and apparently the entire northern half of Zulor decides to move into my backyard."
Lily sat at the opposite end of the desk surrounded by parchment. She didn’t even look up while dipping her quill into the ink. "You did open the gate, Young Master."
Raymond slowly turned toward her. "Thank you, Lily. Your support during these difficult times is truly inspiring."
"You’re welcome."
Marianne’s mouth twitched.
Raymond sighed and pulled the newest registration sheet toward himself.
The number wasn’t the part that truly bothered him.
It was the stories.
Every new group brought more information about what was happening beyond Althoff.
And none of it was good.
By late afternoon, Raymond called a larger meeting inside the administrative hall. Boris arrived first, still wearing his winter armor after returning from patrol.
Edran Marr and two other Marden hunters came with him, followed by Marianne, Lily, and Darric, the former village guard captain who had begun assisting Boris with civilian defense.
A rough map of northern Zulor had been spread across the central table. It was old, poorly drawn, and almost insulting by Raymond’s standards, but it was the best thing the castle possessed.
He had already marked Althoff near the southern edge and placed small wooden pegs around the nearby settlements based on information gathered from the refugees.
Raymond rested both hands on the table and looked around the room. "Start from the beginning. I want every confirmed settlement that has been attacked, abandoned, or cut off. Not rumors. Confirmed."
Edran stepped closer to the map and pointed northwest. "Marden is gone. You already know that."
His finger shifted northeast. "Greymill evacuated. The survivors say the village was overrun the next morning."
He moved farther east. "Darlow is destroyed. Not completely flattened, but nobody is living there anymore. The last group left after a pack attack broke through their goat pens and several larger beasts entered the southern quarter."
Raymond’s jaw tightened. "That’s three villages."
Boris nodded. "And those are only the ones we can confirm."
Darric leaned over the map and placed another marker farther northeast. "There’s also Fellcross."
Raymond looked toward him. "Village?"
Darric shook his head and said. "Small town. Around six hundred people in a good year. It sits where the northern ridge road splits toward the eastern baronies."
Raymond’s eyes narrowed. "What happened?"
"Abandoned."
That single word made the room quieter.
Darric continued. "The refugees arriving this morning passed through part of it. Most of the residents evacuated east three days ago after repeated beast sightings around the outer farms. Some went toward Harrowden territory. Others scattered south. Nobody knows how many made it."
Raymond looked down at the map.
Marden.
Greymill.
Darlow.
Fellcross.
Four settlements gone or abandoned within little more than a week.
"And this one?" He pointed toward another marked location farther west.
Boris answered this time. "Reth Village. About two hundred people. We received word from a hunter yesterday that they’re still holding, but several Beast groups have surrounded the southern and western approaches. They can’t evacuate without passing directly through them."
Raymond looked up. "So they’re trapped."
"For now." Boris face was grim as he answered.