Chapter 985: The Burial Ground
The villagers immediately erupted into a chorus of terrified whispers, their eyes darting toward the village head.
"God, this is horrible!"
"We're all going to die if we go..."
"Elder, is any of this true?"
"It is nothing but mindless rumors!" The heavy doors of the church were suddenly thrown open, and a man with a fierce, scarred face stepped out. He glared in Igor's direction and barked, "Where did you hear such nonsense?"
"It was my—" Igor started to say "my cousin from Ma—" but he abruptly remembered that his distant cousin was a fugitive. He slammed his hand over his mouth to stifle the words.
The fierce-looking man gestured toward a nearby officer, but before he could speak, the village head hurried over. He bowed repeatedly, offering a servile smile. "Lord Matos, please, do not mind these young rascals. They love to spin tall tales just to catch the attention of the local girls."
"I will make sure he is disciplined. I promise you, the relocation will proceed exactly as scheduled."
The man, Matos, glared at him for a long moment but chose not to pursue the matter further.
Cowed by the official's presence, the villagers didn't dare utter another word. Under the village head's stern direction, they dispersed to their homes to begin packing their belongings.
Igor, however, remained consumed by worry. He tried to corner anyone who would listen, whispering that leaving the village was dangerous and that they were walking to their deaths, but most people carefully avoided him.
For one, Igor was too young for his words to carry much weight. Secondly, they were told the relocation was necessary to oppose the hated Spaniards; most felt that enduring a bit of hardship was a price worth paying for their country.
That afternoon, Igor returned home. After a brief word with his mother, he grabbed two slabs of hard black bread and slipped out the back door, heading toward the desolate hills behind the village.
In a dilapidated grass shack halfway up the mountain, Igor handed half the bread to a brown-haired man in his mid-twenties. This was his "distant cousin," Valente. Igor spoke with frantic urgency. "Valente, no one believes me. Everyone is supposed to leave the village in three days. What are we going to do?"
Valente took a large bite of the bread, shaking his head with a grimace. "What can I do? It's over. Everyone is doomed."
He sounded despairing, but in the dim light of the shack, Igor failed to notice the cold, calculated calmness in the man's eyes.
In truth, Tarente was not some cousin fleeing from Carisselli Village. He was a Spanish spy embedded in Viseu, now operating under the direct command of the French Security Bureau.
Upon arriving at Nehabe Village, he had quickly identified the bold but simple-minded Igor as the perfect target. Using a few simple tricks, he had convinced the young man that they were long-lost relatives.
Tarente had then fed Igor a steady stream of horror stories, claiming the people of Carisselli had been sent to Lisbon by the King's order, only to find nothing there. He claimed many had starved, while the able-bodied men were sold into slavery by the British.
He claimed to have escaped the "settlement zone" with his life and stumbled upon this village by pure luck.
Over the past few days, Tarente had continuously indoctrinated his "cousin" with ideas that the British were plotting to destroy Portugal, that France was only attacking Coimbra because the Portuguese King supported Britain, and that the King wanted the people dead so he could seize their ancestral lands.
Though Tarente had received less than a month of training, the "teaching materials" provided to him were so masterfully crafted that he only had to recite them. Forget a peasant like Igor; even an educated nobleman would have been swayed by such persuasive rhetoric.
Tarente swallowed the last of the bread and looked at Igor with a heavy, earnest expression. "Forget the others. We'll take your mother and flee tomorrow afternoon."
"I have acquaintances near the Gata Mountains. We should be able to scrap together a living there."
Igor, having completely lost his bearings, agreed instantly. "Alright. I'll go back and get ready."
Tarente walked him partway down the hill, offering one last piece of advice. "If you have any relatives or friends you truly trust, you can try to persuade them to come. We should save as many as we can, but don't let a word of this leak to the officials."
"I understand. I'll be careful."
Once his "cousin" was out of sight, Tarente immediately hurried toward the north side of the village to signal his waiting companions.
The following afternoon.
Tarente, Igor, Igor's mother, and a neighboring family of four drove an ox-cart along a narrow forest trail, slipping away from Nehabe Village.
The journey was uneventful until the sun began to dip below the horizon. Suddenly, Tarente signaled for the group to stop. He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed toward a dense thicket ahead. "Shh—there's someone up there."
Terrified of being caught as fugitives, they hastily steered the ox-cart behind a distant mound to hide.
Tarente peered toward the thicket with feigned caution before turning to the two other adult men in the group. "The two of you, come with me to see what's happening. Your mother and the others should stay here."
The three men crept toward the source of the noise. As they neared the thicket, they saw the flickering light of torches and heard the rough sounds of men speaking.
Tarente turned back, whispering, "That sounds like English."
Igor and the neighbor, Diado, immediately stiffened with fear.
Soon, they heard footsteps approaching, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged and dropped.
The three men pressed themselves flat into the tall, dry grass. A moment later, they heard low voices speaking in Portuguese.
"Diego and Ricardo were just too sick to keep up, but they didn't deserve to be slaughtered like this..."
"Those damned British. Bruno was beaten to death just because he wouldn't hand over his wheat!"
"Keep your voices down! If they hear us, we'll be the ones buried in this pit next."
"It's only a matter of time anyway. We've only been away from the village for two weeks and twenty people are already dead. By the time we reach Lisbon, I doubt even half the village will be left."
"We never should have believed the lies those bureaucrats told us. We never should have left..."
"But they had soldiers. What choice did we have?"
"We had guns back then! We could have driven them out!"
"Yes... if we had, old Bruno and the others might still be alive..."
Listening to the exchange, Igor and the neighbor began to tremble violently. A cold sweat broke out over their bodies. They felt a wave of profound relief that they had listened to Tarente; otherwise, they might have been the ones currently being thrown into a shallow grave.
After nearly half an hour, the noise in the thicket finally ceased, and the torchlight faded into the distance.
Tarente and the others waited a long while before finally emerging from their hiding spot.
Igor carefully struck a flint to light a candle. The flickering flame revealed a large patch of freshly turned earth.
His pupils constricted. He suddenly snatched up a sturdy dry branch and began to dig frantically...
The next morning.
In Nehabe Village, a minor nobleman named Barmelo sat in his study, listening to the harrowing report from Igor and Diado. His brow furrowed deeply. "Are you certain you saw the bodies?"
"I swear it, Master! There were at least four of them, and they were people from Huca Village!"
Barmelo sat in somber silence for a long moment before summoning his butler. "Go and find Mr. Calhova and Mr. Loritog. Tell them to come here at once. And make sure those officials from Viseu don't suspect a thing."
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