Chapter 190 - The Thirteenth Story: The Abandoned Village
Once the woodcutter calmed down, I gave him some water and decided to listen to his story.
"During the winter of the famine, I was staying in a hut a bit further in. It was close to the source of the stream that flows here, so there was water, and since it was far from the village, there were still some bears. With the help of the Sertorian hunters, if I managed to take down one, I could survive the winter alone."
Since he was close to the border of Sertoria, he had connections for bartering with their hunters. During the famine, he had joined them in hunting bears.
Of course, this was illegal. However, he was a part-time hunter who used this area as his grounds. Crossing the border must have been a daily occurrence, and as they say, the back cannot be swapped for the belly. (T/N: A Japanese idiom meaning one must make desperate sacrifices for survival.)
He knew there was no food even if he returned to the village.
Deciding that if he was going to die, he'd rather it be in the forest, he chose to stay in his woodcutter's hut.
For three consecutive years, rain continued through the summer, and the famine persisted. It affected not only the fields but the forest as well; the plants rotted and withered in winter, and many animals died.
Bears were no exception, and their numbers decreased significantly. It seemed they had moved from the high altitudes down toward the lower lands of Sertoria. The woodcutter dug up grass roots, ate insects, and slowly consumed the dried meat he obtained by helping with bear hunts across the border. He said he even received oats from the Sertorian hunters at times.
One day, a man arrived unexpectedly.
It was a man he knew.
In fact, they were on friendly terms, often chatting whenever he visited the village. He was a serf who couldn't use magic, a member of the lower class. He lived in the section of the village known as the "Lower Village."
A serf would be punished for entering the deep forest without permission.
However, the woodcutter could guess why the man had come.
He knew the man had a wife and two daughters waiting back in the village.
He had surely come looking for food.
"How is the village?"
When the woodcutter asked, the man shook his head from side to side.
"It might be over already."
"What are you saying? Here, take this and go home."
When the woodcutter put some oats in a bag and gave them to him, the man received it by raising it above his head. (T/N: A gesture of deep gratitude and respect.)
"A rebellion broke out."
He heard something grave.
"The people from the Lower Village marched to the homes of the village chief and those in the Upper Village to negotiate for food. They pushed so many times that the others must have lost their tempers. During the scuffle, someone used magic."
"Magic? Did the person it was used on die?"
"Yeah, they died. After that, it was a slaughter. I knew how to use a bow a little because I was taught during my corvée labor. I aimed for the legs so I didn't kill anyone, but they were eventually beaten to death by others anyway. The village chief, who got caught up in it, died too."
Including the injured, the number of survivors in the village had apparently dwindled to about seventy or eighty people.
Since they had killed the village chief, it wouldn't end as mere murder. For treason, the entire family would likely face beheading.
"What are you going to do? There will be a punishment!"
"I know. In the village, terrible rumors are spreading—that people ate the flesh of the dead, or that they killed and ate infants. Fewer and fewer people can even make it to the morning gathering. We can't even turn to the Lord for help. It doesn't look like we'll last until spring."
The woodcutter was lost for words.
Humans eating humans? They weren't animals.
"They're rumors. Just rumors. I don't know the truth. In this cold, an infant would die even if you didn't kill it. Even if they did eat them, if there's this little to eat, it's no wonder they might lose their minds and do it. We'll be punished either way. But then again, there's nowhere to run. There's nothing we can do anymore."
The man began to sob quietly.
"Pull yourself together. You have a wife and daughters, don't you?"
The woodcutter patted his shoulder and gave him some water.
"My wife and I are fine. We've accepted our fate. But I want to save my two daughters somehow."
To the man sniffling back his tears, the woodcutter apparently said this:
"Listen, what I'm about to tell you is a secret between just you and me."
The woodcutter knew there was a hut not far from his own where Sertorian hunters came and went.
That was, of course, across the border.
Emergency rations and charcoal were kept there.
"Listen, just steal it. But don't do it often. Only when you absolutely have no other choice. I hear the Sertorians are kind to the poor. If you steal maybe twice a month, they'll look the other way. I've done it too. I'll tell you where it is now. Survive somehow and tell the Lord the truth. The Lord is a kind man. You and your wife aside, your two daughters might be saved."
The woodcutter told the man the location of the hut and sent him off, emphasizing that he must tell no one.
"That's all I know. It couldn't be helped. If the other side used magic to kill first during the rebellion, they shouldn't be able to complain about being killed back. If the village chief died as a bystander, it might have been an accident. As for killing and eating infants, no one knows if it's true. Those stories only came out during the Lord's investigation when spring arrived. I just feel so sorry for the people of that village."
After saying that, the woodcutter fell silent and looked down.
It seemed the woodcutter had also participated in the investigation.
At first as a suspect, and later as a witness.
"W-What happened to that man?"
Beatrix asked.
Her complexion was poor. Was it because of the nature of the story?
"He was executed for participating in the rebellion. One of the daughters didn't make it through the winter. I don't know what happened to the other one. However, she was calm, not resisting pointlessly or screaming. Perhaps because he spoke honestly, the Lord felt sympathy for him, but he said the law is the law. It was pitiful."
"I see."
Upon hearing the answer, Beatrix looked down.
"What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Y-Yeah. I just thought it was a bit sad, that's all."
She showed a smile, but no matter how I looked at it, she was forcing it.
There might be something more to this.
"Come to think of it, that family was the only one given a grave. It's behind the house where they lived. If you like, I can guide you there. If a Priest-sama offers a prayer, the dead will surely be happy."
As a Priest, having heard such a story, I had to go.
I decided to have him guide us.
"I-I'll go too."
Beatrix said she would go as well.
"You look pale. I'll handle the mourning, so you can rest."
"It's fine. Since I've been involved this far, I want to go."
There was no need to force her to stay, so we all decided to go together.
We picked blooming flowers as we went.
On the way, we decided to stop by a charcoal burner's hut to give our greetings.
An elderly man was at the hut.
When we greeted him and explained the situation, he told us to come inside.
He seemed to be a very devout person; there was a shelf with a statue of the Goddess on the wall, and to my surprise, a book of doctrine sat on a small table.
"Um, by any chance, are you a former Priest?"
Books of doctrine are not easily obtained. From his way of speaking and his demeanor, I had a feeling, and it turned out I was right.
"You could tell? As you suspected, I am a former Priest. In fact, I was the head of the church in this village."
That would mean he was a Bishop.
So he had survived...
The Captain was startled.
The woodcutter must have known. He just looked down without saying anything.
"No. I am not a survivor. In the third year of the famine, at the Lord's request, I went to the church in the basin and simply never returned. In other words, I abandoned the village."
The winter of the third year of the famine.
The winter when the conflict broke out in the village and it was eventually almost completely wiped out.
The Lord feared that the head of the church would starve to death. He apparently told the Bishop, who had been urging for relief supplies, to come immediately.
Thinking he would receive food, the Bishop flew to the basin, bringing two Priests with him. What he saw there was food with prices inflated dozens of times higher than usual, and long lines of emaciated serfs and poor people waiting to receive thin porridge served as a relief measure because they couldn't afford anything else.
The Lord had tried to save his people by releasing stored food, but he had been significantly drained by the war. In the basin far from the Royal Capital, obtaining more was impossible. Apparently, there was a country that had bought up all the grain starting from the first year. It was Engrio.
When the Bishop realized the reality and tried to return to the village, he was placed under house arrest.
Then the snow fell, and he spent the time there until spring.
"I was skilled in staff techniques. If I had fought my way past the guards and returned to the village, I might have been able to stop the rebellion. If such a tragedy hadn't occurred, perhaps what followed wouldn't have happened either, and this land wouldn't have been called an impure land."
Tears flowed freely as he begged for forgiveness from the Goddess's statue.
"What happened after that?"
As usual, Beatrix was relentless.
However, her face was pale, and her voice was trembling.
"Haven't you heard some of it from the woodcutter there? The villagers who were here... they ate the flesh of those who starved to death."
The Bishop returned to the village in spring with the Lord and some food—though it was apparently just a bag of oats and meat obtained by killing a military horse.
The village, where nearly two hundred people had lived, had dwindled to only about twenty survivors.
First, they gave them thin oat porridge, then gradually increased the amount, waiting for them to recover.
Afterward, an investigation was held with the Bishop present, and what had happened became clear.
"Priest Jeanne. You likely know this. Cannibalism is not listed as a taboo in the book of doctrine. Unlike murder in the case of war or duels, the Church has no interpretation of it being unavoidable. I do not know the reason. The villagers were all very devout. Therefore, they knew what was taboo. There are those who say they killed and ate infants, but that is a lie. They ate them only after confirming they were dead."
So, cannibalism had indeed occurred.
My mouth went dry.
The sound of my own heart echoed loudly in my head.
"I told the Lord about it. However, the Lord uttered but one sentence: 'This land is cursed.'"
In the end, those words spread, and even after it became an abandoned village, it came to be rumored as an impure land.
The Bishop apparently returned to secular life, regretting that he couldn't be the emotional support for the villagers leading up to the rebellion and afterward.
The Archbishop and other Bishops in the Royal Capital tried to stop him. They said a Priest shouldn't take the blame just because serfs died.
"Unlike Priest Jeanne's country, the Priests of this nation have a strong sense of elitism. In fact, more than half are the sons of nobles. On the other hand, I come from a background of free farmers. To be honest, I had doubts about the way the Church in this country functioned. That is why I am here like this, praying for the repose of the villagers who died in tragedy."
He had been making charcoal at another church before becoming a Bishop. Charcoal making is one of the Church's sources of revenue.
"Was everyone who survived eating corpses?"
When the pale mage asked, it seemed that wasn't the case.
"There was a couple who were stealing food from a mountain hut across the Sertorian border. They said they lost one child to the cold and had abandoned the other in the forest."
Abandoned a daughter in the forest...
That must be the person the woodcutter mentioned.
In the end, they lost both daughters and were executed for treason.
"The survivors had eyes that glared strangely, as if possessed by something, and they tearfully spoke of eating human flesh while begging for forgiveness. But that couple was calm from the beginning. That is why I believe that couple did not engage in cannibalism."
The couple who had been pilfering dried meat from the mountain hut apparently couldn't bear to see the misery around them and shared their food with the survivors. Somehow, about twenty people managed to survive.
Now, everything was clear.
The Captain was at a loss for words, but eventually regained some energy at the statement that it wasn't a taboo.
When I said I wanted to visit the graves, he decided to accompany us.
We walked to the village and entered through the main gate.
He explained the ruins of the church, the village chief's house, and the differences between the Upper and Lower Villages.
In the Lower Village, there was one crumbling house.
Since everything else had been torn down, it was the only house left standing. It had walls of rough earth and a thatched roof.
"This house belonged to the couple I mentioned earlier. Since they didn't engage in cannibalism, it was spared from demolition."
Beatrix was staring at it intently.
She started to go inside, so the Captain hurriedly tried to stop her, but she shook off his hand and went in anyway.
"Beatrix. It's dangerous."
When I went to the entrance and called out, she was deep inside.
There was a hearth in the center.
"Beatrix. Everyone is worried, so come out."
When I called to her, she finally came out and went straight to the back.
Following her, I saw four graves lined up between the collapsed livestock shed.
The year of death was the same for three of them. It was the year I turned five.
For some reason, there was one headstone that didn't have a name or a year of death carved into it.
The birth year was the same as mine.
Beatrix stared fixedly at that grave, but then, as if suddenly frightened by something, she ran away toward the outside of the village.
"What's wrong? What on earth?"
I was out of breath just from chasing her.
"I don't know, but I suddenly got scared."
Scared? Despite being so fearless?
"We came to visit the graves."
"I'll stay here, so you go finish it."
She was crouching toward the stone wall.
Even though it wasn't hot anymore, she was sweating profusely on her forehead.
"Hey? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. So, just go."
Even though she was the one who said she'd go...
"Hey, Beatrix. This village, is it your..."
"I don't know! This is my first time here too. So, just go!"
She stood up and walked out of the village.
Left with no choice, I returned to the graves alone and offered a funeral prayer while the former Bishop chanted along with me.
That night, because Beatrix insisted, we ended up eating dinner at the hut.
The bandits said they didn't mind, so we helped with the hunting, made dinner, and ate together.
While we were hunting, Beatrix was wandering around the hut the whole time.
She was silent during dinner, and for some reason, she made dried meat and oat porridge herself, chewing it thoroughly as she ate.
When we returned via Teleport and went to sleep at the Ghost Mansion, she came to stay in my room.