"Everybody who was brought here would say that. The guard, who was apparently quite knowledgeable about how to use the whip, said that if the newcomer wanted to say anything, he would whip him until he fainted.

But the fellow was at least smarter than the last fool, and when he realized that he could not get more help, he closed his mouth tightly and lowered his eyes respectfully and cringe—the guard shrugged his shoulders and pulled his overly kind companion away.

The prisoner who had tried to bite the guard was unconscious, his whole body was paralyzed, the chain that connected the collar was not long, and the iron collar was therefore tightly strangled to his jaw, and he struggled in agony in a half-conscious state, his legs instinctively kicking the gray rock, his fingers scratching at anything he could touch, and the two guys beside him stood indifferently, their heads and necks bent forward, and nine other men carrying the piece of wood, with a little anxiety and impatience on their faces—they were waiting for him to be hanged.

Weak, wounded, sick sinners are not treated here, and if they live, not only will they not be able to carry the piece of wood that belongs to him, but the other eleven will add the weight of a grown male when he can no longer support it—but if he dies, he will be untied and replaced by a new, more powerful man. In this gloomy, cramped, harsh cavern prison, a decrease or increase in even a pound, no, half a pound, a quarter of a pound can mean whether a person can live or die.

Therefore, even if this hapless madman had not been hanged by himself, he would have been killed by the people around him in the shortest possible time.

The white-haired guard turned to look at them for the last time of the day, "Why did the royal capital send so many prisoners over?"

"For our war with the orcs," said his companion, "since the bastard merchants sold the blueprints of catapults and ramming rams to the orcs, they have also learned to use their equipment to siege the city - in order to destroy these things, our soldiers have to go out of the city to fight, you know, basically they can't come back, it's a shame, it's a good boy...... In the first year we almost emptied the whole of Thundercastle for this, and the old lord wrote a letter to His Majesty asking for more soldiers, but the king ended up sending sinners who deserved to be gallows and guillotined - well, I mean, there was nothing wrong with that, at least we didn't have to feel too guilty about pushing them out. ”

"Won't they run away?"

"In the case of orcs on the outside, sturdy civilians may still be slaves to the orcs, and these scum with a mark on their faces...... Oh, sorry. He apologized to Whitehair, who had been equally distrustful and hostile to him when he had first arrived, and would even keep driving him away until Whitehair, with his frank attitude, good conduct, hard work, and astonishing learning, which he could write, read, and know a great deal of herbal medicine, won some tolerance from the people of the outer town of Thundercastle. He was allowed to stay here temporarily, using the herbs he had grown and gathered himself, writing and reading letters for people, writing contracts, etc., in exchange for food, and occasionally helping them with dangerous and dirty petty labor—the temporary guards of these death row inmates were one example.

"Of course, I'm not talking about you," explained his companion hastily, not without pretense, and the white hair gave him a smile, and it was a pity, the former thought to himself, that if it had not been for the brand and the dry gray hair of an old man of seventy or eighty, he would have been a handsome lad, and of good birth—he said so because the white-haired teeth were very neat and not so black and yellow, and slaves and commoners would not have such teeth, and they could not afford to buy spices for cleaning their teeth, and the food they usually ate was coarse. He shook his head inwardly and put his mind back to the original topic: "In short, the orcs also know where those imprints come from, and if they are caught by the orcs, they will only become food. He thought about it for a moment: "But what you said did happen, and there were people who wanted to betray the humans and throw themselves into the camp of the orcs, but they were soon disappointed (he smiled happily at this), and the mongrels born of humans and orcs, that is, half-orcs, would also be driven under the walls by the orcs, and use their flesh and blood corpses to build a ladder of attack for the orc soldiers, how could they think that the orcs would be willing to treat a human kindly?" Humans are to them what cattle are to humans, either to be enslaved or to eat, there is no second use. ”

"And," he continued, "it is not without reward for their desperate struggle, and if they do accomplish their task, and come back alive and well, their charges will be written off, and they will be free man from now on, and if he would be a soldier of Thundercastle, and if he could fight bravely, he would have received the same thing as the other soldiers, though there were very few such people, very few, very few," he said in a resolute tone. But there were, although, as a former death row inmate, they could only be soldiers forever - even if he cut off the chief's head. ”

He pursed his lips at the white hair, "Fortunately, think about it, just the people we just saw," he made an exaggerated gesture: "What a terrible and ridiculous thing it will be to become a knight one day?!"

The white-haired guard smiled: the smile touched the black imprint on his face, and the words "blasphemy" and "murder" were clearly visible, "fate is always fickle," he said, "and no one can guess where their next step will be." ”

＊＊＊

The hunt in Thundercastle lasted for five whole days, and the prey was piled up in mountains, argali, horned deer, bison and wild boar, and countless rabbits, and almost every household of the people of Thundercastle was dispatched to collect their flesh, blood, entrails, and furs, and the fur was to be tanned as soon as possible, so that the cold snap that could freeze the river in an instant was coming; the blood and intestines, plus oats, could be made into blood sausages, and the liver could be made into sauce, and the meat should be dried, smoked, or stored directly in the ice cellars. Ice cellars are one of the strengths of Thundercastle, as long as you dig caverns more than fifteen feet deep, you can see the permafrost that does not melt even in summer, and the meat of animals and some perishable food can be stored in it for a year or more.

And then there is the harvest of the serfs that they have toiled for a year, beans, wheat, rye, and oats, some of which are threshed, and some of which are ground into flour, and turnips, carrots, turnips, cabbage, leeks, lettuce, onions, spinach - roasted and roasted, dried in the sun, pickled and pickled.

The whole Thundercastle was busy, and the elves were no exception, and they often went out to monitor the movements of the orcs, but also to find berries and nuts that had not been missed by squirrels and birds.

They had met the orcs for three days in a row, they were scouts of the army, more nimble and intelligent than ordinary orcs, good at climbing and hiding, and if the orcs were not prepared to change their strategy, this kind of probing would only last for a decade or half a month.

Pressed for time.

On the third day of the hunt, he caught a purple-eyed pheasant, a cunning bird that could be sold for a good price for every handful of feathers - a purple-red crown that could be made into a brooch or hair ornament. The emerald green of the back and chest, the metallic feathers woven together with spider silk would be a dazzling and wonderful fabric, the crimson waist feathers are perfect for decorating a noblewoman's snow-white breasts, and the silver-white and black-brown tail feathers can be used to make a fan held by a delicate little hand or to be attached to a slender waist.

The feather was somehow missing, and it was supposed to be transported to the royal capital along with the skins of the horned deer and marmots.