Chapter 603 — Belk Loren

Yet just before he set off, an abrupt sound suddenly reached his ears.

Mixed into that sound were curses and the noise of blows striking a body, along with faint, suppressed groans.

Belk frowned and looked toward the direction the sound came from, which was still two street corners away—a distance an ordinary person's hearing could never reach.

He stepped forward, his figure tracing a string of afterimages across the nearly empty street, and seconds later arrived at that alley mouth, where he saw what was happening in the small lane—

Several tall, sturdy men were gathered there, punching and kicking a frail figure already curled up on the ground, loudly cursing with crude and unbearable words. On the ground nearby, a wooden basin had been knocked over, and a dozen or so garments lay scattered around.

This repulsive scene made Belk's face darken, and he shouted at once: "Stop—what are you doing?!"

The sudden shout made the men who were committing the violence stop short. They turned their heads toward the direction of the voice, their faces still bearing anger, as if they meant to teach a lesson to whoever had interfered—but upon seeing clearly the tall young man at the alley mouth, these men almost instantly froze, dumbstruck, accompanied by a few soft sounds of sharply indrawn breath.

"My... my lord..."

Someone faltered out a word, and Belk looked at the one who had spoken: "What is going on here?"

Seeing their sturdy build, their relatively neat clothes, and the way they had recognized him in an instant, he had already half-guessed who they were.

"My lord... we... we were disciplining a criminal," the first to speak said, his voice trembling. "She... she is a washerwoman, but she stole her employer's clothes..."

She?

Belk lowered his head and saw that the frail figure, who had been curled up on the ground from the beating, was slowly, bit by bit, climbing to her feet, shivering as she crawled toward the scattered clothes and the wooden basin. Her dry, sallow hair hung in disarray down the back of her head; she wore a tattered garment whose original color could no longer be discerned, and her legs were wrapped in many strips of ragged cloth to ward off the cold. She lifted her head for a glance, revealing a face with little color in it, withered and yellowed from malnutrition.

She was a woman, not the least bit pretty; only her eyes left Belk with any deeper impression.

But if she had been pretty, what she faced here would likely have been far more than fists and kicks.

Belk lowered his head and watched the washerwoman, who was now picking up the clothes—some of them still damp and nearly frozen to the ground—and said, "Whose clothes did you steal?"

The washerwoman lowered her head, her voice very soft: "No one's, my lord."

"My lord, you see, she is still lying!" one of the men standing around cried out at once. "She stole..."

"Stole yours?" Belk raised his head and fixed his gaze on the man who had spoken.

That man immediately fell silent as a cicada in winter.

"Stole yours?" Belk shifted his gaze to the next man.

That man, too, fell silent as a cicada in winter.

"Yours?" "Or yours?"

Not a single one opened his mouth to answer.

"Very good. At least you no longer dare to keep lying," Belk said, watching them, each word making these men shrink their necks a little further. "This way, at least, I won't have to send your corpses back to the Eastern Region."

These people were Eastern Region soldiers off their rotation shift.

Apart from the soldiers occupying the cities of Xuanque, few could be as strong as they were, wearing warm winter clothes, with energy to spare—and able to recognize Belk Loren at a glance, even in plain clothes.

Belk lowered his head again and looked at the washerwoman, who had picked up all the clothes and now stood by her wooden basin with her head down. "Are you a local?"

The washerwoman still kept her head down, as if not daring to look up and meet his eyes: "...Yes, my lord."

Belk nodded, his gaze returning to those scoundrels among the soldiers. He drew a breath, but slowly calmed the magic within his body.

An army has discipline—that was Prince Edmund's command.

"Bullying commoners, deceiving your officers. Report to your centurions, thirty lashes each, one week's confinement, half pay this month."

Those scoundrels slunk away in dread and dejection.

The washerwoman remained kneeling on the ground, her head bowed, her wooden basin and the clothes that needed rewashing set beside her.

"Raise your head."

Belk spoke evenly.

He saw her lift her head slightly, but she quickly lowered it again, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead.

Belk sighed inwardly, crouched down, and brought his eyes level with hers, looking at that malnourished face, which had nothing to do with beauty, and at those eyes in which awe was mingled with numbness.

On other occasions, in the banquet halls of castles, countless young ladies of noble birth and striking beauty would gladly have paid the price of an entire estate for the chance to look him in the eye at such close range.

"Those men are the scum of the Eastern Region; they do not represent the Eastern Region's army."

The washerwoman immediately lowered her head and replied, "Yes, my lord."

Belk frowned, glanced again at her thin, ragged clothing, then fished two gold coins from his breast.

After a moment's thought, he put the gold coins away, then rummaged through another pocket for a long while until he finally found some copper coins and cut scraps of silver.

He tossed the coins into the washerwoman's basin, then stood up. "This is compensation from the Eastern Region—use it to buy bread, and to get yourself a set of clothes that will keep you warm."

The washerwoman's gaze fell on the coins clinking into the basin. Carefully, she gathered them all up, her movements gentle and earnest. When she had finished, Belk heard her suddenly ask:

"My lord, can you bestow winter bread and warm clothes upon everyone?"

The unexpected question made Belk pause, and instinctively he wanted to tell her—of course he could.

He was the eldest son of the Duke of the Guard, the Marquis Belk Loren, the future master of the Eastern Region. In his own name alone he held countless estates and farmlands; even though half of them had already been donated to the legions or distributed to the serfs and tenant farmers on his lands in response to Prince Edmund's decrees, he still had the means to hand out winter food and clothing to every commoner in Soringburg.

Yet the washerwoman had already risen to her feet and was bowing respectfully in salute, then departed with her wooden basin and the clothes within it.