คืนค่าการตั้งค่าทั้งหมด
คุณแน่ใจว่าต้องการคืนค่าการตั้งค่าทั้งหมด ?
ลำดับตอนที่ #7 : Chapter 6: The Heart of Kingship (1) (หัวใจกษัตริย์ 1)
CHAPTER SIX: THE HEART OF KINGSHIP (1)
WHAM!
Felin heaved the rice sack onto his tired shoulder as the Sun blazed bright overhead, burning his body with its heat. Sticky sweat was soaking him all over, but he had no choice but to move his feet one in front of the other along the red dirt road ahead, his steps slowing as he went due to ebbing strength. Tall, muscly young men behind him were taking over him, hurling out annoyed insults for him being in their way as they passed, and Felin pretended not to hear with gritting teeth as he moved on.
Never thought manual labor could be this hard on your body.
“Outta the way, ya king-boy. What nuisance.”
The chastising voice from behind, coupled with the scorching heat and the fatigue, was driving Felin’s temper to boiling point. And he decided silently to fight back.
What the hell if I don’t?
Fast as his thought, Felin was shoved forcefully right into an empty cart coming towards him. The heavy rice sack he was carrying dropped to the ground, followed by the young king-to-be who thought he’d try his hand on laboring. The brown-haired lad lay sprawled on the sack as rice grains started spilling from it and a confused din rose around him.
Right then, a hand from one of the large men gathered around him snatched Felin up.
“Oi, calm down. Calm down!” An older man in the throng appeased him. The furious man glared fiercely at the terrified boy, gnashing his teeth.
“Good-for-nothing king. More trouble then ‘e’s worth.” He finally spat irritably then whirled the boy away as easily as he would a stuffed toy. Felin found himself tossed onto the roadside as the rice delivery went on with haste.
He’d probably die from fatigue.
That’s the only thing that came to mind. His stupid body is getting worse by the day. Felin Debereaux used to have more strength. He used to be stronger. So why did he struggle so much with just one sack of rice?
And for how much longer did he have to put up with this? Goddammit. Heart of Kingship? Pah! Heart of Slavery, more like. No time to even find a girl to be his freaking queen.
The more he thought about it, the more it annoyed him, and it didn’t help that the sweat was making him feel sticky and uncomfortable all over either. The weather showed no signs of relenting, and all these people rushing back and forth was making him dizzy. He tried wiping the sweat off his face with his hand, but that only made it worse. And his shirt was too drenched through with sweat to work.
Dammit. Should I just slack it off for good?
Felin allowed himself a fleeting moment of selfishness, before flapping his collar to let in some cool air. Just then, a bamboo tube filled with water was handed to him from one of the laborers who at least seemed friendly.
“Here, lad. Let’s fight on after a bitta rest.”
“Thanks, uncle.” Felin replied as he took the proffered kindness.
Stupid, freaking exhausting subject. He didn’t really mind the exhausting part. The part that bothered him was not getting paid.
Last week he was sent to help farmers plant rice, and this week he’s at the central granary helping the laborers. Three full days a week of fieldwork, toiling from before the sun rises until after the sun sets.
If this is the heart of kingship, he could only gather one thing: the heart of kingship is freaking servitude.
If only Dad was here. He’d probably laugh his head off. What a horrible insult to a thief’s dignity this is. And it’s not that he possesses sky-high patience or suddenly gained a boost of diligence that he’s suffering through all this crap. Got three escape plans a day that he would’ve carried out, if not for his team members…
First up, Ro Zevares, the freaking know-it-all, knows everything going on in his head like a freaking ghost.
Next, Angelina Romanov, the world’s biggest shrew, who is such a wearingly nagging, griping, bossy little thing.
Worst of all was the seniors in charge of their group: Justices Laurenz and Lucas. So intimidating he didn’t dare make that much trouble.
He’d so loved to wring the neck of that git who set up the groups.
The thought didn’t help to ease the heat and the stickiness. Felin raised the old tube to his lips and tipped the water down his throat, gurgling some in his mouth then spitting it out, before drinking some more then splashing the rest on his face, hoping the cool will calm his temper.
Feeling somewhat better, Felin tossed the thing aside and made to get back to work. The instant the tube hit the ground, however, a heavy fist smashed into his cheek.
Felin felt his eardrum go pop as the force sent him flying before landing hard on the dirt. His head was swimming as he staggered up to his feet, and blood flowed from his nostrils as he felt his throbbing cheek. The nauseating stench of blood filled his mouth, and he spat out his dislodged molar.
What the hell was that?
Before he could make sense of anything, someone grabbed him by the collar, nearly raising him off the ground, and slugged him right in the pit of his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
“Think ya can do anythin’ wi’ money? Think ya can’t die if yer king, huh? Ya effin’ scum! Ya blitherin’ hellbeast!”
Heavy blows pummeled him relentlessly. All he could feel was pain and anger coursing through him, but he was too tired to retaliate. All he could do was glare back with eyes burning with fury, and it did nothing to calm the raging furore of the man before him.
“Oi! Hey! Enough! Enough!”
“Tis not enough! These scum will ne’er learn how many more lives could be fed wi’ all they’re stuffin’ down their effin’ throats!”
“I said enough! What’ll ya do if summat happens to ‘im? Ya wanna be in trouble with Philosopher Lemothy?”
The warning worked instantly this time. The man held back his blow, his expression of one suppressing his anger with utmost difficulty.
“Go, get back ta work!” The mediator ordered, and Felin was tossed away. But the man didn’t leave without smarting last words.
“Tis yer lucky day, ya puppy.”
Yours, more like, you demented dog!
Felin could only retort in his head, two hands funnelling into fists, fury threatening to burst like a fiery volcano.
No wand. No sword. No magic. No use of force.
The four rules of The Heart of Kingship course.
But who’s gonna pay for driving his patience to breaking point like this?
Felin raged inside as his brown eyes glowed fiercely, even as his bruised and battered body was without any strength. It hurts so much it’s gone numb. And the numb was more than the pain.
What an irrational bunch of a**holes. What has he done to them deranged dogs?
A smile tucked up the corner of his mouth as Felin tried to calm himself down. He inhaled deeply. Then a voice spoke up beside him.
“Heard you got into trouble with the locals. How are you doing?”
“Ro.” Felin looked up and greeted his teammate, whose green eyes looked worried even as he smiled.
“Beaten up, shouldn’t have asked.” The troublemaker still had enough strength to retort. “Them brutes. They just want some potato sack they can vent their temper on. Unfortunately for me, that sack is me.”
“Well, put up with it a bit, alright?” Ro replied, wiping sweat off his forehead with a cloth and flapping his shirt to cool himself. He looked just as tired and worn out as Felin, not surprisingly as his beggar-of-Tristor physique didn’t seem to fit laboring that much as well.
“I’m trying. But if they keep going I dunno how much longer I can. Dunno what the heck they’re so mad about.”
Ro turned to study Felin. The lad looked pathetic as well as funny with half his face all red and swollen, one eye almost entirely swallowed. But when it comes to Felin, one of his best qualities is his strength of will that could endure where others might have already cracked and retaliated, a strength probably honed from a life which had been through tough times like these more than most.
Ro gave a small smile, before his gaze wandered off to the people carrying sacks of rice from the granary over to the waiting wagons.
“Do you know where all this rice is going?” He asked up.
“The hell I know. What’s it got to do with me where they’re going?”
“Some go to Zares. Some to Kanoval. Some to Gildireg. Some to Gemini. And some go as far as Grandline. Everything looks good and fine to us here, but the Blood Rain three months ago destroyed so much of Eden’s arable land, much more than we can imagine.”
“We still have plenty to eat here in Edinburgh, but out there people are dying. Some are dying of hunger, but many others are dying of thirst.”
Ro went on in his usual calm, nonchalant tone as he walked over to pick up the bamboo tube Felin had tossed off. The remaining water that has spilled out has long since seeped away into the ground. A small smile was glazed upon Ro’s lips, but Felin sighed softly.
See what he meant? The food shortage he was talking about that everyone thought was just a joke.
Felin kept the notion to himself, smiled a little then shot back.
“So what? No one’s born without a problem. If you just sit there crying and don’t fight for your life, then you deserve to die.”
It was a reply befitting of someone who has been fighting fiercely for survival all his life. Ro smiled in reply then accepted.
“Well, maybe yes. But don’t you go thinking that everyone is smart enough to solve their problems on their own. And sometimes their problems might be too big for them to handle.”
“If you can’t handle it by yourself then find someone to help. Or chuck it to the king for him to solve. What the freaking hell do we have them for, after all?”
Ro laughed at that, before replying.
“True as you said. Aries’s solution is a posting hefty tax hike, hoping the lavish spenders will stop spending. Whereas Athens resorted to human sacrifices to appease the fury of the gods. And Kanoval declared war with Scorpio to take their river plains. Which do you think is the best?”
The two met eyes, sizing each other up, as overhead the clouds drifted in to block out the blazing Sun, making way for the cool breeze to flow in and dispel the heat burning in Felin’s heart. His eyes gleaming, the troublemaker retorted.
“Seems you know a lot about all those other countries, huh. What about yours? What’s Tristor going to do?”
“Tristor?” Ro reiterated, a little taken aback, before nodding. “Tristor has always served one master. Whatever that master says, maybe that’s what we’ll do.”
Having said, the beggar stood up to head back to work, a clear sign of ending the conversation. Felin chuckled and hollered at his retreating back.
“Hey, there’s no need to take it that seriously. A little rest wouldn’t hurt!”
Ro merely raised a hand in farewell as he moved on.
“You go ahead and rest. I’ll go to work.”
“Don’t be too hardworking. The heavens gave you life. If you’re not lazy and selfish, you just watch; they’ll punish you someday.”
Felin joked laughingly, but Ro wasn’t laughing as he shouted back.
“It won’t hurt all the selfishness in the world much, if you sacrifice some of your comfort, and let others be selfish sometimes.”
3rd Week (July 21-25)
It won’t hurt all the selfishness in the world much, if we sacrifice some of our comfort, and let other people be selfish sometimes.
Who’d think these words would come from a beggar. And if this is the heart of kingship, at the heart of a king would probably be...sacrifice.
For this week’s fieldwork, Senior Lucas took us to Edinburgh’s Experimental Cropland. Experimental, they call it, but the land it covers was shockingly vast. I and Ro were sent to help the farmers sow and plow, while Angie was called to help out the women in the weaving factory. As usual, we’re still working hard from dawn to dusk, as to be expected of those learning the heart of kingship, whilst Senior Lucas and Laurenz, who are supposed to be studying the heart of citizenship, chatted away with the village chief, all smiles, laughing and fun.
The heart of kingship is working like a slave, whereas the heart of citizenship is happiness.
Only fools would still want to be king after going through this course.
The experimental cropland in this village is stranger and more wondrous than any other I’ve ever seen. First of all is the amount of men it took to work a small piece of land. That is because a year’s work has been packed into a week, and continuing without pause. Might sound strange. Truth is a piece of cropland normally should only yield crops once a year, at best maybe twice. This experimental cropland is an experiment on Magical Agriculture, and it uses as many farmers as sorcerers. As a result, crops could be harvested in a week. It was strange but fascinating. If this experiment succeeds, it might be the solution to Eden’s starvation.
That’s what I thought. However, when I shared my view with Ro Zevares, all he said was:
“If you can solve everything with magic, then wouldn’t it be faster to just conjure up food and send it off?”
When I quickly supported the fabulous idea, Ro laughed then explained.
“All matter in the world is born, exists and ceases to according to the cycle of nature. Things that go against the law of nature will not exist for long. Say you transform a rock into rice. Your eyes see it as rice, your senses feel it as rice, you cook it and eat it, and it feels like rice to you. But a rock will always remain what it is; a rock, as it is its nature.”
When I asked him about the experimental cropland, Ro sighed softly before clarifying.
“This plot of land is unnaturally forced to yield crops within a short time. By the end of this year, it would probably be as parched as a desert.”
It was a terrifying outcome, which made me wonder why they would go to such lengths even when they know full well the fate that awaits. I and Ro argued over this for a long time, before we finally concluded that so long as a way to survival lies before us, we have no choice but to struggle on, even as we know the end of the road is an inevitable hell.
The famine outside Edinburgh seems to be growing steadily more severe, seeing as the scale of experimental cropland is expanding continuously. What’s more, two days ago Angie came back from the weaving factory with news that the silk and satin factories are closing down, as the central government plans to send women to work in the experimental cropland as well.
Angie is probably right; With barely food to put on the table and barely life left to live, who would have room in their heads to worry about silk and satin?
The next news from Ro was even more disheartening: Zares declared war on Witch early this week, after Kanoval took almost three quarters of Scorpio’s land. Gemini invaded Venol. Aries declared war with Nile.
The situation of the world outside Edinburgh seems to be getting worse by the day. In Ro’s words, the flames of war are burning Eden. The blood spilled by war would soon be more than the Blood Rain many months ago, and the scorching heat of war would become hotter than boiling rivers of molten lava.
Lastly, if God really exists, I wish he would bless us with cold rain to stop the flames of calamity.
—A thief who never believes in God
ความคิดเห็น