Donner stood silently in line as a myriad of emotions surged strongly through his heart. Carefully, he peeked at the effeminate young lord standing beside that scary looking knight with a longsword strapped to his waist.
A few weeks ago he witnessed the great battle that occurred within the lord's castle that faithful evening as dozens of knights and soldiers clashed. Although he didn't know what happened then, he was aware that a lot of nobles and knights fled from the town that evening.
A few days later he heard rumours that the first young master rebelled and robbed the lord's treasury before fleeing the town with the remaining noble families leaving the second master severely injured and penniless.
When he heard the news he had assumed that the second young master's fate was sealed since he didn't have the money nor power to retain his power as the lord of this town. But to his utter surprise instead of hearing the news that the young master fled as expected in order to preserve his life, he heard that the young master actually dared to attack the neighbouring town and even went as far as to burn it to the ground.
Rumour had it that the second young master sought help from Puhbeer who sent his Legion of doom to annihilate Redwater. Although Donner actually doubted that the fearsome Puhbeer would stoop to the level of aiding a mortal to do his bidding since there was no probable explanation for the young master to be able to conquer Redwater, and with all the eyewitnesses that testified to seeing members of Puhbeer's Legion supporting the young lord's Knights in battle he had no choice but to accept that as the truth.
When he finally accepted that Puhbeer aided the young lord, Donner and a lot of sensible townsfolk began to worry that the young lord had become corrupted and would soon attempt to offer them up as sacrifices just like those blood cults were rumoured to do.
But it seemed that Donner's worries were unfounded because rather than offering the townfolks as sacrifices to some vile entity of the underworld the young master actually started something he called a 'support program' for the townspeople of Redwater who were displaced.
All families who were displaced were provided with a hundred Lins and new stone homes were built for them as compensation for their homes that were burnt in the fire. STONE HOUSES! Seeing the smiling faces of the townspeople that were moving into their new homes made Donner wish that his home was also burnt down so he could get to move into one of those stone ones.
The stone houses strangely weren't built like normal stone houses but were instead held together by a strange white mud that turns into rock after being left out to dry. Donner had heard from a serf that was part of the people producing the mystical mud called 'siment'.
The process of making the 'siment' was of utmost secrecy that even the people there could barely understand what was going on there. All Donner knew was that they used some kind of chalk to produce it since the serfs working there haul basketfuls of the rocks every day to the site.
Regardless of how the 'siment' was produced or how the houses were being built Donner still felt very envious of the lucky people whose homes were burnt down. Although the houses were somewhat strange-looking compared to real stone and wooden ones, Donner was almost completely certain that it would be a lot warmer than his little wooden hut when winter finally arrived.
Just when he thought all the excitement was about to settle the young lord suddenly decided to make a move again. When he heard the castle's summoner announcing that the young lord was recruiting for the garrison he quit his job at the mine and rushed over immediately.
One of the reasons he was so heavily enticed to the point that he didn't even consider what the garrison was about was obviously the pay, which was a 'sky-high' fifty copper Thales a month. That was comparable to the pay of an experienced artisan. His pay as a miner was just a few iron Lins per hour so the difference was marginally high for him to ignore.
Besides he had the faint feeling nagging behind his mind that joining the young lord now might probably be the best decision he would ever make in his mind.
As for what the summoner said about the job he was just too excited to pay attention to that.
The selection process was very strict. Out of the five hundred-odd people that came only about fifty were selected so he counted himself as being extremely lucky for the chance. Those who passed the selection program were brought to a clearing north of Gray Willows forest.
At first, it seemed what they were being paid so much for was going to be easy. Although they were made to sleep in tents and were unable to return home, they were well-fed with everyone getting brown bread and a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, vegetable soup in the afternoon, and Meat porridge in the evening.
Seeing the meals being delivered from the lord's castle made Donner feel like this was the easiest job he had ever taken all his life... Well, that was until the 'training' started.
On the first day, they were trained by the young lord himself. They were made to stand in formation and do all sorts of weird exercises while the young Lord rested slothfully on the side, bathing in the despising gaze of knights and commoners alike without.
The resentful men were made to do all sorts of weird exercises that the strange young lord gave various names like "push-ups" and "squats", they were also made to do several laps through town and eventually made to stand for long periods of time in the sun with their arms down to their thighs and their backs straight.
It was simply torturing to Donner, they were made to do all this all morning without slacking off in the slightest, or else they would have to eat their porridge bland without meat in it. Someone had tried to cheat but under the cold watchful eyes of those terrifying knights, he stood no chance and was quickly caught and was sentenced to be deprived of meat for three days. Seeing such an example they no longer had hopes of cheating the young lord but instead honestly accepted their fates.
Donner began to faintly suspect that this was all an elaborate scheme by the young master to toy with them lesser folks, making them do all sorts of embarrassing things just for the laughs.
While it might be unlikely he had heard from some of his friends at the local tavern that most nobles had very weird fetishes and vastly different mindsets from normal people so there was the possibility that the young lord might have just been doing this just for fun.
But despite suspecting that he was being toyed with and led by the nose like a common farm animal, the fear of losing out on the evening meat made Donner resolute in his duties. His thoughts were that even if the young master was toying with them he was losing anything other than a little bit of his almost diminished dignity in exchange for a free meal and a free place to stay, so regardless of how Donner looked at it this 'training program' was a great deal for him.
Still, Donner was confused about what all this training was for. They weren't given all swords to train with like regular infantrymen were nor could all this be for them to just do sundry duties.
Just as Donner was getting lost in his thoughts the young master said that if everyone was about to complete one more lap around the town without collapsing they would all get one more bowl of meat porridge. However, if even one person gave up they would all lose their chance of getting an extra bowl.
Donner heard the sound of someone swallowing behind him.
Pray, is this another joke that the young master came up with? Like donkeys, with a carrot and stick the prince had led everyone on. But Donner had never considered himself a dumb farm animal.
But then he thought again.
'What if everyone could do it? Then later would that mean an extra bowl of porridge?"
The lure was too great for the simpleton to ignore. Drooling at the thought of two steaming bowls of delicious meat porridge, Donner decided to try his best.