Evetrona's old stories

"How much do you sell this rabbit here?" Eve asked.

The two men looked at each other, and one of them replied, "About fifty or sixty coppers!" Then, the other added, "About a bushel of wheat."

Eve asked again, "How many kilograms is a bushel?"

"It should be close to 60 pounds, I don't know the kilograms."

"60 pounds... That's less than 30 kilograms, about 27 kilograms." Eve answered for him.

"What do you think should be done about this?" the man asked her.At this moment, the three of them were staring at Eve, waiting for her to make a verdict.

"Do you have enough winter reserves this year?" Eve asked them.

"Enough, the harvest has been good in the past few years, and the food is cheap."

"That's it." Eve returned the rabbit in her hand to the man beside her, "You two take the rabbit and give this girl 10 pounds of wheat, what do you think?"

The two exchanged glances, seeming dissatisfied with Eve's verdict, but finally nodded, and one of them said, "Of course, it's all up to you." The other also nodded in agreement.

Eve looked at the little girl named Awanna again, and asked her, "What about you, what do you think of this idea?"

"What else?" The little girl was also not satisfied.She let go of her arms hugging the man's thigh, picked up the hat that fell on the ground, shook the dust, and walked down the mountain on her own.

"Awanna, don't be ignorant!" a man shouted behind her.

"Don't be angry, she is still young and not very sensible." Another man said to Eve with a smile.

"Don't forget to cash in." Eve turned the horse's head and said to the two, "I'm still a little uneasy, anyway, I have nothing to do, so why don't I follow you back, and I'll leave after this matter is over."

"But it's too early to go back now." A man said, "It's also far from the village...Master, we can't just go back with a rabbit."

What he said made sense, it was still morning.

"That's right, then I'll go to the girl in front first." Eve said, "I'll wait for you at her house, don't forget."

Eve rode her horse and went after that tomboy Avanna.

The two middle-aged men stood in place holding the rabbit and watched her leave.

[86] Winter Wind (Part [-])

Eve didn't plan to talk to Awanna from the beginning, she also made up a temporary idea with the attitude of being responsible for her actions, and wanted to continue to follow up on this matter.

Sometimes, justice does not mean a clear conscience - if life cannot be measured by value, it will be meaningless to blindly seek justice, and in some extreme cases, defending one's own interests is tantamount to depriving others of their right to live.

When Eve caught up with Awanna, the other party was running along the mountain road.Eve stopped Awanna, and the little girl stared at her unkindly.

"The rabbit is very important to you?" Eve got off the horse and asked directly.

The little girl snorted, but didn't answer.Along the way, it was the first time Eve met someone who treated her like this.

"I'll give you two more silver coins, plus the ten pounds of wheat they gave you, and you won't lose." Eve led the horse and walked side by side with her.

"Who wants your money!" cried the little girl, "I want that rabbit."

"Okay, take it." Eve stretched out her hand, and there were two silver coins lying on the palm of her hand. Although Avanna yelled fiercely, when she saw the shiny silver coins, she grabbed them in her hand immediately.That's right, how could she, who has never suffered a loss, not want the money that came to her door.

"You should compensate me more." After Awanna received the money, her attitude softened unconsciously, "You just made me lose face in front of them."

"You're ashamed? I don't think so." Eve looked at her with interest, "Then how much do you want?"

"At least one gold coin... no, ten!"

Eve laughed out loud.

Eve followed Awanna to the village where she lived. The two men did not tell lies. The hunting places here are not too close, and it would take about an hour to walk all the way there.

Eve walked with her and chatted for a while.This girl was about the same height as Eve, her hair was cut very short, almost an inch long, coupled with the general high cheekbones and thinness of the locals, and her deliberately low voice, people who saw her for the first time would mistake her for a boy.Awanna's behavior is also quite masculine. From what happened just now, it can be seen that she is very strong, her temper is straightforward, and she never bears it when she feels unhappy.

"Actually, you don't need to come here." Awanna said in a rough voice, "Those two guys don't have to play tricks for this little thing."

"It's okay, I'm going along the way anyway." Eve didn't lie, the direction the two of them were walking at this time was pretty much the same as the direction preset on the compass, which meant that she was getting closer and closer to Schulenburg.

The village where Avanna lives is located in a mountain depression.After entering the mountain depression, the first thing that catches the eye is not the village buildings, but a huge towering mountain.

Eve also observed this kind of strange mountain at close range during her travels, and the most famous of them is the Longhus peak in the east of Enschmidt. It has a diameter of nearly 200 meters and a height of more than a thousand meters. It stands like a straight black tower on the north bank of the canal, which is extremely spectacular.

Such a natural and peculiar mountain is naturally the most ideal place for human worship and sacrifice.Whether it is the metaphorical teachings of believers from all over the world or Lu Ting who believes in magic mysticism, there are a lot of religious explanations for this kind of mountain.

The same is true of these hunter-gatherers in the north of Krigin. They built villages and tribes at the foot of sunken mountains to absorb the faint heat emitted by these black mountains.They call Shen Shan the father of the earth, and call it the god of strength and reproduction. They wrap or decorate Shen Shan with colorful ropes or cloth strips to worship and worship as the totem of the clan or tribe.

The Shenshan mountain that Eve saw was such a black giant wrapped with strips of various colors. Most of the strips of cloth that had been exposed to the wind and sun had faded, and they were floating in the cold winter wind.People pray for prosperity and expel disasters—this is an expression of spiritual sustenance, very primitive, but still shocking.

"My house is over there." Awanna pointed at the foot of a mountain and said, "It may be a little broken, don't take it personally."

Eve led the horse and followed her through the round thatched cottages.There are more than [-] thatched cottages scattered here, large and small.Eve also didn't know whether a village of this size was big or small for the local aborigines.

The location of Awanna's house is relatively outside, and it is dilapidated.Although Eve was prepared for this, but when she got closer to see it, she was still a little surprised—this house didn't seem like a house that could live in people.

The roof seemed to have been repaired several times, but it was not neat at all, covered with thatched roof, sunken in some places, and sagged along the earthen wall in others.Guennai mercilessly grabbed a small handful of hay and ate it into her mouth. Eve's face turned red in an instant, and she quickly pulled Guaennai aside to prevent him from approaching the hut.Fortunately, Awanna kept her head down and didn't realize that the roof of her house had been stolen by the guest's horse.

It was dark in the room.In this cold north, in order to keep warm, the windows of houses are generally made very small, or there are no windows at all.Since there was no fire, the inside of the house was not much warmer than outside, and it was even better to be out in the sun.

The room was short and narrow, and the walls were uneven, as if a piece of mud could be removed by pulling hard. The corners and upper edges of the walls were dark, which might be mold spots or soot.The smell in the room was slightly choking, like smoke or dust.

"I won't sit down." Seeing her coming over with a dusty wooden stool, Eve quickly refused—even if she just sat on the ground.

Awanna stopped in her tracks, and silently threw the stool in the corner, with an embarrassed expression on her face.

"Your family... have all gone out?" The room was quiet, and there was no third person, so Eve was very careful when she said this.

"My brother and I live here, just the two of us. He works in a nearby town and can come back every half a week." Akanlu paused, and added: "He went out the night before."

"Nearby towns? There are only Schulenburg and Fukuian Town nearby, which one did he go to?"

Eve asked while looking at the objects in the house.There are only two rooms in the house. The entrance is the kitchen, and the inside is the sleeping place.In the kitchen there are several crooked clay pots, a clay stove in the middle, and some firewood next to it.

"It's in Fukuian Town."

The two talked for a while, and Eve felt a little unbearable, and ran outside the house to stay.Seeing that it was time to feed the horses, Eve took some oily bran cakes from the bag, took out a large handful of dried apples, removed the cores and stuffed them into its mouth.

"It eats really well," said Avanna, looking at the white horse.

"We need to add some sugar." Eve said, "It's too cold here, and horses tend to lose weight easily, which is dangerous. So even if people are hungry, the horses can't be hungry." She squatted down again, and raised Guennai's hooves with her hands to see if there was any snow left inside.Gua Ennai bent his legs very cooperatively, and a tacit understanding had already been formed between one man and one horse.

After checking Guennai's status, Eve took off her gloves.She dug out a few pieces of yellow cane candy from her pocket and stuffed them to Awanna.Awanna looked at the thing in her hand, and didn't even realize what it was right away.Compared to half a century ago, the price of sugar in the domestic market of Klicking has dropped significantly, but for these people in the northwest, it is still not a common thing - the life they live now is not much different from what they were half a century ago.

When Awanna recognized that the thing in her hand was a candy bar, her expression was more excited than when she accepted the silver coins.She raised her head, wanting to thank Eve, but saw a few people approaching in the distance.So, she quickly put the candy into her arms.

The person walking in front was a black and thin old man, two people supported him, one on the left and one on the right, and the rest followed behind them.

They approached Eve against the wind.

"Hello, hello," said the old man, panting.

Eve nodded at him.

The old man was dressed very thinly, and I don't know how this man could stand the cold.The two middle-aged men closest to him had full beards and wore overcoats made of animal skins. The shattered animal hairs swayed in the cold wind, exuding a wild and smoky smell.The old man smiled at Eve, then grabbed the arm of the middle-aged man beside him, and talked to this man.He spoke not Kriging, but an unknown tongue with a low voice.

The middle-aged man listened carefully, then nodded, and then said to Eve: "Master Knight, my father is the patriarch here, and he doesn't speak Kriging very well... We want to know the purpose of your coming here." When he said the last sentence, his eyes turned to the direction of Shenshan on the right.

"It's nothing serious." Eve smiled at him and shook her head. Her smile was not easy to see, it was a serious smile pretending to be serious.She said: "Your clansmen had a dispute outside just now, let me help you make a decision, and it has been resolved now. I am just curious and want to come and have a look."

The old man listened carefully to Eve's words, and nodded from time to time. Obviously he could understand Kriging, but he couldn't speak it.

"He said - we have nothing to see here, just a poor mountain village." The middle-aged man translated his father's words, "What do you think of the girl behind you?"

"How about what?" Eve didn't quite understand the meaning of his question.

"Do you want to buy her back as a maid?" The middle-aged man asked again.

Eve looked surprised, she glanced at the man, and then at the old patriarch beside him.The old patriarch nodded towards Eve, saying that what his son said was what he meant.

Eve finds it difficult to comprehend what is happening at this moment.She turned to look at Avanna, only to see that the girl was covering her eyes with her arms, as if crying.

"She's actually not a member of our clan." Seeing that Eve didn't answer, the man said, "Her mother married into the phratry, but that woman had the audacity to kill her husband. According to the rules here, she So she became the wife of her husband's brother, and the brother beat the woman to death for revenge. It stands to reason that the brother's children are his own children, but he doesn't plan to have the woman's two children, so this The two children were kicked out of the clan together."

Eve was a little dizzy.For an ignorant clan with exogamy, it is uncertain whether women are considered as persons or property.In primitive society, it is possible for a younger brother to inherit his elder brother's wife and children, or even for a son to inherit his mother as his wife.

"At that time, Avanti, who was seven or eight years old, came back to us with Awanna, who was a few months old, and my father took them in because he felt sorry for them." The man continued, "After all these years, Awanna has grown up, and the patriarchy knows her details, and they don't want her. We wanted to make an exception and let her marry into the clan, but her elder brother didn't agree."

"You guys want to secretly sell her while her brother is away?" Eve understood a little bit.

"We don't know what to do with her, it might be better." The man frowned.His father patted his arm, so the man leaned down again to listen to his father, and after a while, his eyes turned to Avanna, and he asked her loudly: "Avanna, do you want to go with this knight lord?" ?”

Awanna still covered her face with her arms and did not respond.

"Avanna!" he yelled again, causing the girl's shoulders to tremble in fright.

"I don't want to leave, I want my brother!" Finally, Awanna replied with a trembling cry.

The man yelled at her in the local dialect, and Eve's hand kept pressing on the bronze coin embedded in the leather cover of the spellcasting book, so she could hear that it was a curse word.

Seeing that the emotions of both of them showed signs of losing control, Eve stretched out her arms and used the large cloak to draw the man's sight back.She said to the man: "Now it's not whether she is willing or not, but the matter itself is illegal."

"We don't have laws here." The man's tone was very restrained when facing Eve.He glanced at his father and said to Eve, "We have to settle everything by ourselves. It's not good to have laws, and in the end, no one will obey anyone."

"You can have it, but I can't." Eve said, "You know there is Schulenburg further to the west, and that's where I'm going. If I bring someone there, how can I explain where this person came from? I don't even know if there is a place for her there."

"You..." The man was about to speak when he was interrupted by his father. His father made a three-pointer in front of Eve, and said in a not-so-clean manner: "Three silver coins, you take her out."

"She has no way out here." The man also said to Eve, "You pay three silver coins, which are the Toke coins used in the south. We rarely see them here. When we hand over the silver coins to her brother, it will also prove that we did not throw her out to feed the wolves."

The man spoke very earnestly, which made Eve a little shaken. She didn't know how true what he said. If she could really pull a girl out of the fire pit, Eve would rather trouble herself and help her, but the problem was that Awanna didn't want to leave.

Just when she was in a dilemma, a teenager ran into the village from the mouth, calling Avanna's name as he ran.

The man hurried to his sister, covered Awanna behind him with his arms, and glared at the middle-aged man in front of him with an angry face.

And when Avanti and Eve met eyes, both of them were shocked.

Eve recognized him—Avanti was the thief who stole the horse last night.

[87] Winter Wind (Part [-])

Just when Eve was in a daze, Avanti suddenly knelt down in front of Eve.

"It's all my fault, please punish me, please don't take Awanna away!" Avanti said in a trembling voice.

"Avanti, what exactly do you want?" The middle-aged man couldn't stand it anymore, "Do you want your sister to stay by your side forever? Do you want to keep her forever?"

Avanti ignored the man's words, he just knelt on the ground full of repentance, waiting for Eve to speak.

"You misunderstood, I don't want to get involved in your affairs." Eve looked at the young man in front of her, and didn't want to ask him anything, just thinking that it was inevitable in a poor country.Only the two of them knew about the incident in the middle of the night, and Eve didn't want to mention it again, so as not to complicate the matter and make it difficult to get away.

Eve walked to Guennai's side, and quickly got on the horse.She just wanted to leave this place as soon as possible, and let them settle their affairs by themselves.

Avanti was surprised when she saw Eve's actions.On the side, the old patriarch shook his head and sighed heavily.Avanti glanced at her younger sister behind her, and then at the middle-aged man beside her, only then did she realize that she might have made a mistake.

"Are you going to take Awanna away?" Avanti got up from the ground and ran to Eve, blocking Guennai's way.

"I don't want to do anything. Instead, it's you—I'm thankful you didn't take my horse away." Eve looked down at him on the horse and said angrily.

Avanti's complexion became very ugly, he was feeling ashamed and painful at the moment.

Eve pulled the rein and made Gua Ennai turn his head, trying to get away from the young man, but the young man blocked the horse's path again.

"Accept her, you must be a kind person." The boy glanced at Awanna who was not far away, and said eagerly to Eve.

"I'm good to good." Eve said, "But this is not a reason to force buying and selling."

"As long as you take her away and let her serve you... as long as you can take her out of here, I will do whatever I want."

Eve looked at him suspiciously, then looked at the man and the old patriarch in the distance, and she asked them, "Didn't you say that he doesn't want to be separated from his sister? What's going on?"

"A few times before, we wanted to send Awanna out, but the ones who came were either human traffickers or merchants going to the north, and they were all men. No one as noble as you has ever come here." Middle-aged man Said, "We don't want her to go out to be a slave either, but if she stays here, she may not be as good as a slave in the future. You know, our climate here does not allow people to idle around."

"She's not like a loafer."

"But she's a woman," said the man. "My lord knight, noble lady, I know you might be offended by saying this, but—that's how we are here. There will be a day when she can't support herself, and then she can what to do?"

In northern hunting clans, brothers' children are their own children, but sisters' children have no such relationship.This phenomenon explained from the side the inheritance structure between them and the object of the younger generation's obligations in the future. If Awanna can't have a family in the clan, she can only be alone.

Eve sat on the horse and didn't say a word for a long time.The villagers gathered more and more, and they all stood behind the old patriarch, just quietly looking at the girl riding a horse not far away, with very dull expressions.In the distance, the cloth strips on Shenshan were still tangled and fluttering in the wind.

Avanna stood there silently, neither opposing nor fighting for.Eve looked at Awanna with her head down, and didn't know what to say.

"Actually, you don't need to worry too much about it." The middle-aged man broke the silence, "There are also others who have bought slaves from us and sent them to Luoming to sell. They never ask the slaves for their opinions."

"Do you really think that taking her away will make her life better?" Eve finally let go.

"I believe in you." It was Avanti who spoke, and the young man said excitedly, "You recognized me, but you forgave me. I have never seen such a magnanimous person like you. If you can let Avanna follow you, I would be willing to let me commit suicide on the spot."

Eve was silent for a while, then turned her gaze to Avanna again, and she asked, "Avanna, are you willing to go with me?"