94 [INTERLUDE]The reach blooms I

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POV of Cleyton, sixth moon ,284 AC

My life has changed a lot... the good thing that it has changed in a positive way bringing many positive things

The war I know fought between the nobles over some silly dispute must have led to many people having to leave, many of whom were recruited by lords to take them off to fight.

Although I had wanted to go and have the opportunity to become a squire of some knight, I had the responsibility of my family and by fate I was not recruited by our local lord.

In the village we all thought that the same thing would happen, some would go and come back, many of them would be missing, nothing serious because the war had never come to these territories, in the reach, there was only the threat of the iron born that were far away from where we lived.

But what we had never thought had happened, the war came to our village, with most of the fit young men out, the pale faces of the old men and the few that had the ability to fight was the common thing and we only had a couple of spears, we had to use sharpened sticks to try to defend ourselves.

War is cruel and we were all told the tales of what happened when one side lost, the men were put to the sword and the women were raped and then killed when the victors got bored with them.

In an act of desperation we gathered almost all the people to fight while those who could not hid.

Our opponents twenty knights... though we numbered over three hundred... no one knew how to wield a weapon, while our opponents wore full plate armor and probably with years of training and rode huge steeds which also wear armor.

Although we formed a full line, we could easily have been crushed, as most of us were trembling with fear, and praying to the seven for strength for the battle ahead.

To our good fortune the leader of the group got down from his horse and slowly approached us

When we could see his eyes he took his sword out of its sheath and I could smell how some of the people around me had peed themselves with fear.

The knight stuck his sword in the ground, spoke and offered us a deal.

A large army was approaching from the north, if we resisted we would be massacred, if we surrendered our weapons and offered no resistance, they would spare all of our lives in exchange for handing over all our valuables and part of our food reserves.

We ALL agreed, no one wanted to have to fight against the knights and the soldiers that might arrive from the north, it was better to trust the knight's word, because if what he said was true and we resisted, we would be massacred in the same way.

The knight who offered us the deal stayed organizing us while we delivered everything of value and all the metals we had in our possession and at the same time we prepared the barley sacks to deliver them to our conquerors, who respected his deal.

The next day tens of thousands of men in full armor marched through our town, marching in the vicinity of our town.

It is worth mentioning that the elder of our village was puffing up his chest knowing that the joint decision had saved our village from a possible massacre.

After that the army had disappeared just as it had arrived with impressive speed, our lives returned to normal except that now we had no knives to cut our meals and we had to squeeze our rations a little to last until the next harvest.

After a long time we heard again news that the war was over and that the king had been overthrown by one of his relatives and a new house ruled the seven kingdoms, but what mattered to us that the tyrell houses which had ruled us for the last generations for a period of prosperity had fallen and now we were ruled by invaders.

Finally, we discovered who they were, foreigners from another place with a different culture and a very different religion and speaking a completely different language to the surprise of some, remembering that the knight speaking with us spoke the common tongue perfectly.

At first the information was brought to us by the survivors who had marched with the tyrell to the stormlands they told stories of men in the form of wolves that killed everyone, monsters that ate human flesh, beasts in the form of humans

Something very different from what we observed in that we were treated very differently from the news that had happened in the villages of the river lands or what they had done in the storm lands.

Then it was the septon of our village, which defined them as the reincarnation of all the evil that plagued these lands and that it was our religious duty to expel them, the last we knew of him was that he was hanged in tumbleton in a raid of the Prussians because they were corrupt and told lies in the name of the seven.

Although we thought that our nobles had simply changed... things changed and changed a lot

The knight who had offered us the deal before, returned along with ten men, that by the command of our new lord he had become our mayor and we must obey him

He and his men worked very hard to repair our houses due to the rainy season that was coming and most of them were not in good condition, they also hired many among those me

Where they taught me the work of carpentry, we all collaborated in one direction and it was for our own benefit, in a short time we managed to repair the houses and we could endure for the first time the rainy season without a collapsed roof or a house collapsing because of the water.

We had to get used to them, since they demanded us to stop doing certain things that they did not say, but they showed it in their faces... it was obvious that when we emptied the waste from our houses, they made a face of disgust and they endured the gagging.

On one occasion we saw the fury and monstrosity that so many said of the Prussians, when a group of rebels tried to forcibly recruit the people, the Teutonic knight went into a state of uncontrollable rage in which he easily killed two of the rebel knights and with his men went out chasing the survivors bringing back their heads after almost three days of chasing them.

After several moons we had latrines, a barn more apt to store and not have problems with mice and above all a new church... without the septon those who sought spiritual relief had to do it with the new religion, which had become very popular

Because they did what they preached, the Prussians were the most god-fearing people I had ever met, there was not a Sunday that they did not attend their church and pray for forgiveness for their sins, while they behaved in the most correct and honorable manner I had ever seen in my life, apparently, even so, they found sin in their actions that made them fear for their souls

I also joined the new religion, which was very different, for it was not seven gods, it was only one whom we were to praise and pray for forgiveness.

The Teutonic knight who had us under his protection and taught us the values which we should follow

Austerity, bravery, but without complaining about it, courage, determination, discipline, honesty, devotion, but always with religious tolerance, humility, incorruptibility, diligence, obedience, punctuality, reliability, temperance, capacity for sacrifice, restraint, sense of duty, sense of justice, sense of order, sincerity, uprightness, subordination, hardness with oneself.

A huge amount of principles, which seemed almost impossible to fulfill, but one only had to observe my brothers in faith, who did everything possible to be better, always looking for the way to be a better person, helping others, improving themselves, looking for elements of their personality to change.

For we are human and imperfect and we must seek the way to reach corporal perfection so that our souls can rest in paradise.

Although we could fail in many of the values which the Teutonic knight pointed out to us were the unpardonable crimes

The loyalty to the protestant monarch, should be absolute, it did not matter if his decision was wrong and against justice, god chose him to guide us and it is our duty to obey him, any crime against a protestant lord was a crime, it was forgiven by god

Obedience was to be absolute to our king Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, king in Prussia and head of the state religion.

The change that had come to our people had been very good, we had improved the fields and had applied the Prussian agricultural techniques that had been handed over to us

Even with fewer hands due to the losses in the war we had achieved a record harvest, we had our granaries full and we had made a celebration for it.

We had never had such a bountiful harvest, a blessing from the almighty because we abandoned pagan practices and began to follow the true religion

Our mayor had arranged for an architect to arrive and we were planning the construction of several new houses, which would be given to us free of charge and we only had to make a payment each moon to guarantee the improvements and repairs, which was much less than what the Prussians paid us to work for them.

But one day a Prussian horseman arrived bringing a letter which was shown to our mayor and then he galloped on south.

The message was simple, our town was to be abandoned and we were to travel north to be relocated to a new town.

The news was not well received by many, as no one wanted to leave the town where we were born and raised above all, now all that we had advanced, all that we had built was to be left behind.

The knight only said a few words to make the majority change their minds.

''it is the king's order, god commands it''.

The majority remembered that our behavior was contrary to the teachings of our priest and stopped complaining and we obeyed what we were ordered.

We began to prepare everything to go to our new home, we took everything we had with us in Prussian army logistic wagons and headed north.

After two days of travel we arrived at our destination, it was a new city because the old man of the town who had traveled several times among the tyrell territories and had never seen it before, opened the gates of the city.

The city gates opened, welcoming us, showing us a city made of stone, with hundreds of houses as we had been promised they would build for us.

An unkind man gave us directions to our new homes and forcibly bought our livestock, filling our hands with silver coins for selling him our cows.

When I set foot inside my new home I froze a little, it was the home that a nobleman would have, it was large and spacious, with a sewage system included that took away all of our waste.

With the coins I received I managed to get a lot of furniture at a good price from an honest Prussian carpenter, such as some pillows stuffed with duck feathers, which were very comfortable.

It was very obvious why the Prussians always said that we lived like savages, since making the comparison, the Prussians lived with an opulence that only the nobles allowed themselves and wanted to share it with everyone for those who had been born simply in a wooden house that was falling down because of its age, it was as if our new king had opened the gates of heaven and brought a small part of it to his territories.

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