I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 4
004 The Sold Bride
The Lord’s soldiers arrived in the village with the convicts. It was said that the village had been waiting for them since the beginning of the year.
She had heard that the convicts would live as slaves for a duration determined by the severity of their crimes.
Lij hadn’t been here long, so she didn’t know much more than that. In her own village, there had never been talk of slaves sent by the Lord.
From what she overheard the village women saying, it seemed the Lord collected a bit more in taxes in exchange for providing convicts as slave labor.
Unlike other places, this village had a small number of women. Perhaps because of that, it was considered best for women to stay out of the soldiers’ sight, so all the young women remained hidden indoors.
Only the women whose husbands had long passed or those of advanced age gathered together with the village men to greet the soldiers.
Thinking she might have to entertain the soldiers herself, Lij felt relieved when she was told to hide.
‘But…’
‘What will happen to me now?’
Hiding her anxiety, Lij transferred a small amount of oat porridge into a bowl. The porridge, boiled with plenty of water, was bland without any salt.
It was the porridge the village women distributed once every two days. She wished there was more to eat, but she had to be grateful just to have this.
Lij approached the child huddled in the corner. She crouched down beside the child.
When she silently held out the bowl and a wooden spoon, the child began to eat ravenously. The cold oat porridge vanished by half in an instant.
The child glanced at her tentatively, took a few more bites, and then held out the spoon as if reluctant to finish it.
While Lij quietly ate the remaining porridge, the child watched her intently.
“….”
When only two spoonfuls were left, Lij pushed the bowl back toward the child.
She was hungry too, but it couldn’t be helped.
The memory of being hungry as a child lasts a lifetime. She knew this well because she had lived it.
The child began to eat again, face nearly buried in the bowl.
Once a day, she shared this thin oat porridge with the child in this abandoned, empty house.
‘How much longer must I stay here?’
Her body hunched instinctively at the thought of an uncertain future.
Struggling with a lack of food in the winter was a constant reality, but this year was particularly difficult.
Many of the men who had been drafted into the war years ago had not returned. Because the men had been taken to the battlefield so many times, there was a severe shortage of hands for farming.
Fields were left abandoned despite having land. Life became harder and harder with each passing year.
To make matters worse, the number of Magical Beasts increased, causing damage to villages everywhere.
Money was needed to request a Magical Beast subjugation from the Guild, but many small villages could not afford it.
Originally, the Lord’s soldiers were said to have subjugated the Magical Beasts regularly. However, the number of soldiers had also dwindled due to the war, so now most villages had to fend for themselves.
Fortunately, the village where Lij lived had suffered no damage from Magical Beasts.
But with the number of men greatly reduced, there was a surplus of women. The number of women who couldn’t marry even after reaching marriageable age grew. Lij was one of those women.
Lij’s sister, two years her junior, married when she turned sixteen.
As the amount of work women had to do at home increased, many men wanted healthy and strong brides. Her sister was not only healthy but also skilled at embroidery and housekeeping. She was a prime candidate for a bride.
The sister just above her had married reasonably well, though a bit late. Her husband was an older man. Having entered the marriage as a second wife, the sister immediately gave birth to a son.
A woman who gives birth to a boy—a future laborer—is treated better than a girl who only consumes a dowry.
Among her husband’s children, who were not much different in age from herself, her sister secured her place by bearing a son.
Only Lij, who was neither exceptionally beautiful nor particularly skilled at housework, remained at home, unmarried.
Just before this winter, her father sold her ten-year-old younger brother to a slave trader. For the past few years, boys had fetched a higher price than girls.
Her father tried to hand Lij over as well by adding a bit of money, but the slave trader refused. In a situation where women were overflowing, there was no reason to take Lij, who excelled in neither looks, health, nor handiwork.
In the end, her father sold Lij to a merchant looking for women to marry off to other villages.
Peddlers who traveled from village to village selling goods often doubled as couriers or matchmakers.
That merchant had been asked by a man from a distant village to buy him a bride.
A man who cannot find a wife in his own village and seeks to buy a woman from elsewhere can hardly be a good person. Especially if he’s paying money to buy a bride from far away….
While the village men with daughters hesitated, her father made a deal with the merchant.
Only after arriving here did she learn she had been sold as the wife of a Forester. The merchant handed her over to a stranger whose face and name she didn’t know and then descended the mountain.
As soon as they first met, her husband began to beat her. The reason was that she had arrived a day later than she should have.
The delay wasn’t her fault, but there was no chance to explain. She curled into a ball and took the beating. It felt like she was beaten for a full hour.
Recalling that day, Lij trembled involuntarily.
Even now, the thought of it terrified her. Sometimes she even dreamt about it.
The child, while eating the porridge, suddenly looked at her.
Lij forced the corners of her mouth up in a smile to show she was okay.
Her husband seemed to have work to do as a Forester. After beating her for a long time, he shouted at her to have a meal ready and headed into the mountains.
That evening, her husband did not return.
Her husband had a five-year-old daughter from his first wife. After her husband went into the mountains, she stayed in the Forester’s hut with that child for several days.
Only after many days passed did she hear the story that her husband had been bitten to death by a wolf.
She found out later that he hadn’t just been bitten to death, but had actually been eaten by a wolf. He had been eaten from the head down, so they were barely able to recover his clothes and a few bones.
Lij was his third wife. She had heard from the child that the second mother had been beaten to death. She thought it was a relief that her husband had died.
‘But was it really?’
Now, she wasn’t so sure. It might have been better to have a husband, even a beating one. She might face even harsher circumstances ahead. A woman without a husband is like a sheep with no one to protect it. Everything in every direction is a threat.
“….”
A small sigh escaped Lij’s lips.
The Forester’s hut is deep in the mountains. Because the Village Chief said it was dangerous for only a woman and a child to stay in such a place without a man, Lij came down from the mountain with her husband’s child.
Since then, the child and Lij had been staying in this empty house on the outskirts of the village.
They hadn’t been able to bring anything from the Forester’s hut.
The Village Chief had told them not to take anything, saying he would provide what they needed in the village.
It might be different if she had family to back her up, but in a small village like this, the Village Chief’s word was absolute. A bride—and an outsider woman who hadn’t even taken root in the village—could not go against the Village Chief.
Lij left the hut with literally nothing but the clothes she was wearing and the child.
The Village Chief and the village men watched them the whole time. They monitored her while she was at the hut to make sure she wasn’t hiding anything or stealing.
Lost in her daze, Lij snapped out of it at the sound of the child licking. Slurp, slurp. The child was sticking out a long tongue to lick the bowl.
Lij gently pulled the porridge bowl from the child’s two-handed grip.
After rinsing the bowl, which had been scraped clean, with a bit of water from a small jug, Lij lay down on the straw bed with the child.
She pulled the child close to huddle together for warmth and closed her eyes. The sound of hungry stomachs growling echoed from both her and the child.
“….”
The child tucked cold hands into the space between them. In the darkness, their white breath rose. One slightly larger, one smaller. White puffs of breath scattered endlessly into the dark.
“I’m hungry,” the child suddenly muttered.
Tears welled up behind Lij’s eyelids.
“I’m sorry.”
If only she had handled things better, if she had been the type to cling desperately to the Village Chief or seduce a man, or if she at least had something she was particularly good at, maybe things would have been different.
Lij hugged the child and whispered once more.
“I’m sorry.”
She already knew she was a person of little consequence. It had always been that way.
But she shouldn’t be like that when she wasn’t alone, when the child was by her side. It wasn’t just her own foolish self at stake; even the child’s life was in danger.
Even though she was just a daughter, everything in that hut belonged to this child, but she had been too foolish to protect it.
She didn’t know if she would ever go back to that hut. But even if she did, all the important things would be gone.
The many hides that had been left, the stored food—someone had probably taken them already.
‘I’m so sorry.’
*
Bang, bang, bang!
At the sudden noise, Lij, who had been lying awake in thought, jumped in startle.
Someone was pounding on the door.
The child clung to her in fright. Lij was startled too. Who would come at this hour of the dawn?
As she held the child, holding her breath, a voice was heard.
“Hey there, it’s me, the Village Chief.”
“….”
Lij sat up.
She approached the door quietly, but she couldn’t decide whether to open it or not. Would it be better to just pretend to be asleep?
But the Village Chief, as if knowing she was at the door, continued.
“No need to open the door, just listen. After deliberating all night, your husband has been decided. He’s a man the soldiers brought. It’s been decided that we’ll accept him as our village’s Forester. He’s not a convict, so don’t worry.”
Lij gasped.
It wasn’t rare for the Village Chief to forcibly decide the marriages of widows or unmarried men and women. It happened from time to time.
Especially in the case of a woman who had lost her husband, many ended up that way. It wasn’t a world where a woman could survive alone, so there was no choice.
In fact, in these hard times, one should be grateful if someone took them as a wife. This was even more true for someone burdened with a young girl who couldn’t even be used as a laborer.
But she was afraid. The Village Chief said he wasn’t a convict, but there was no way to know if that was true.
Most convicts who became slaves were bandits, thieves, or murderers.
She had heard that those who committed minor crimes didn’t fall as low as slavery.
Even her husband, who wasn’t a convict, had beaten a person nearly to death; what would a man who had been with convicts be like?
I don’t want to.
Lij mouthed the words. Could she say that? Could she say she didn’t want to? While she opened and closed her mouth several times, the Village Chief continued from behind the door.
“Keep that in mind and head back to the mountain. You can go with the man who will be your husband. Come back with him as soon as it’s light.”
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to. She was afraid. But her mouth remained shut without making a sound.
The child, who had come to stand behind her, gripped Lij’s hand tightly.
‘What do I do? What should I do?’
Would she be painfully beaten again? She was so scared.
The thought of running away crossed her mind, but she couldn’t. Doing that would only lead to a worse situation. There was almost no chance for a lone woman and a young girl to survive out in the world.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to abandon this child.
She could not abandon this child, who had been starving alone in that cold mountain hut, hidden from her father’s sight.
She couldn’t abandon this child who had no one to even share a bit of cold oat porridge with, this child who didn’t even have a name at five years old.
‘I can’t do it.’
Tears burst forth.
The child clung to Lij’s waist. It was as if she were holding on for fear that Lij might run away.
Lij, small for her age, and the even smaller child huddled together.
The cold wind whistled into the house like a ghost’s wail.
