The morning air over Constantia carried the smell of fresh-turned soil and baking bread, and Fragha stepped out of the Oderick's house with an easy stride, gesturing for the others to follow. "Come along," he said. "I want to see what Albert managed to finish while I was busy sleeping through everything."
Hans fell into step beside him, brushing flour dust off his sleeve from breakfast. Oderick and Ivan trailed just behind, the two of them exchanging a glance before hurrying to catch up. None of them thought much of it. A lord checking on his village after two weeks unconscious seemed reasonable enough.
They wandered first past the new rows of houses, their timber frames still pale and raw against the older buildings, then past a storehouse with a freshly mansard roof. Hans pointed out a few details with obvious pride, explaining how Albert had reinforced the foundations against the coming rains. Fragha nodded along, offering the occasional word of approval, but his attention wasn't really on the buildings at all.
Beneath his calm expression, he was quietly cross-referencing the path ahead against the Territory Map only he could see, the faint outline of a cave marked somewhere in the hills to the north. Just a little further, he thought, keeping his pace unhurried, his hands clasped behind his back like a man with nothing more urgent on his mind than admiring his own village.
Little by little, without anyone quite noticing, he steered them away from the houses and toward the rising slope of the northern hill.
The path grew steeper, the grass thinning into rock and scattered brush. Eventually they reached a stretch of steep cliff face, half-hidden behind a wall of overgrown branches, thick vines, and tangled undergrowth. Fragha slowed as he took it in. According to the map, the entrance should have been right here, but the whole area was buried under vegetation so dense it looked untouched by human hands in years.
So that's where it's hiding, huh? he thought, keeping his face carefully blank. He already knew, with quiet certainty, that somewhere behind that wall of green was a cave mouth. But there was no reason to let the others see that on his face, not yet.
"Let's stop here a moment," he said instead, turning his back to the brush and looking out over the valley below.
From this height, Constantia spread out beneath them like something out of a painting: gold wheat fields rolling in long, even waves under the wind, rooftops arranged in neat, deliberate rows, smoke rising lazily from a few early chimneys. Hans let out a low whistle, hands on his hips.
"Would you look at that," he murmured. "A year ago this was half-collapsed shacks and mud paths. Now look at it."
Oderick nodded slowly, his chest swelling with something like pride. "The wheat fields alone could feed three villages this size. My lord, whatever you've done here, it's working."
Fragha allowed himself a faint smile, one that was, for once, entirely genuine. Then the wind shifted, rolling up from the direction of the sea, cool and salt-tinged, and something in his expression changed.
Now, he thought. Showtime.
"Ngh... ahh..." Fragha let out a low groan, doubling over slightly and pressing a hand to the bandages wrapped around his stomach. "Seems the wound from last night's blow is acting up again."
Behind his bowed head, hidden from the others, his mouth curled into a satisfied little smirk. Sike! Kekeke.
Oderick's reaction was immediate. The color drained from his face, and he lurched forward half a step, hands out. "My lord! You only woke from your coma, are you—" His voice cracked with genuine alarm.
Ivan was quicker, moving in to catch him, arms already reaching to brace his lord's weight. But Fragha, with the practiced timing of a man who had clearly thought this through, shifted his body just enough to slip past Ivan's grasp, letting himself tip backward toward the wall of brush behind him.
It should have been a clean, dramatic collapse. A perfect performance.
His foot caught on a real tree root.
Crack!
went the branches as he crashed backward into the thicket with far more force than he'd planned, the impact knocking the wind clean out of him.
Son of a bitch! Fragha thought, teeth gritted, this was supposed to be an act! Why does it actually hurt, damn it!
The tangle of vines that had concealed the cliffside for who knew how many years gave way beneath his weight, tearing loose in a shower of leaves and snapped twigs. And there, framed by the settling dust, was a dark opening in the rock, unmistakably a cave mouth, its edges worn smooth by wind and time.
Oderick's eyes went wide. "Wait," he breathed, staring at the gap in disbelief. "My grandfather used to tell me stories about a hidden cave somewhere in these northern hills. I always thought it was just... a story old men told to scare children."
Sunlight slanted into the cave's entrance, catching on something inside that glinted and sparkled, and all three men went very still.
Scattered across the cave floor, half-buried in loose rock, was a treasure heap that looked almost too orderly to be natural: veins of iron ore threading through the stone, uncut diamonds catching the light in sharp little flares, streaks of raw gold, and stones etched with faint glowing runes.
Ivan made a small, strangled sound. "Is that— is that a runestone? Those are rarer than anything I've ever handled." His eyes then snagged on the iron ore, and something in his expression shifted into an almost reverent hunger. "And iron ore. Beautiful, beautiful iron ore."
Hans, still frozen at the mouth of the cave, went pale, then flushed, his mind visibly racing through numbers. This was exactly the kind of windfall he'd been begging the heavens for since the treasury ran dry.
"The village's money problems," Hans said slowly, almost to himself, "just solved themselves."
Whatever composure either of them had left evaporated on the spot. Hans took off toward the cave entrance at a dead sprint, robes flapping, completely forgetting the lord who was still lying flat on his back in the crushed undergrowth. Ivan was right on his heels, muttering something about iron purity under his breath like a man in love.
In his haste to reach the ore first, Hans planted one foot squarely on Fragha's stomach as he charged past.
Oof!
Before Fragha could even process the pain, Ivan followed a half-second later, landing his own boot directly on the same spot for good measure.
Fragha lay there in the ruined bushes, bandaged stomach throbbing under two very real footprints, the man who had bled and sacrificed to protect this village reduced to a groaning heap in the dirt while his own men trampled him in a stampede for treasure.
You absolute bastards!!! he screamed inwardly, unable to do anything but lie there, twitching, as the fury built up with nowhere at all to go.