Chapter 5: Fontdmer’s New Master
Golden twilight spilled over the mountaintop, painting the scattered wooden houses on the hillside amber.
Matt, the mayor of Fontdmer Town, had zero interest in appreciating this sunset. His rough fingers rubbed together frantically, his knuckles white from the pressure.
He stood on the hillside, eyes glued to the approaching convoy in the distance, his heart sinking like a stone.
What he’d been dreading had finally arrived.
A month and a half ago, Matt got word that Fontdmer Town and all of Shadowpine Ridge had been handed over to the Ividaya family—to Thane Ividaya.
This meant the residents of Fontdmer Town would have to start coughing up taxes.
You gotta understand, ever since the last tax collector got himself killed by bandits, Fontdmer Town hadn’t paid a dime in taxes for a full ten years.
Now with this lord showing up, everyone was on edge.
Several hunters had already bolted, but Matt, like the other well-off farmers with tons of farmland, couldn’t bear to ditch his property and could only choose to stick around.
Matt and the other wealthy farmers had talked about resisting the new lord’s rule.
Matt didn’t want to hand over his wealth to this lord for nothing, and was ready to play dirty if he had to.