The laws of the Red Tide clearly state that under the military household system, if a rebel appears in the village, the entire village is responsible for supervision.
Louis turned around and looked at the elderly village chief in front of the crowd: "Did you not know? Or are you unwilling to speak?"
The old man leaned on a cane, his face ashen, his lips trembling slightly in the wind.
His gaze flitted evasively past Louis, as if trying to find an escape route.
"I...I am just an old man. They usually don’t tell anything...I saw them leaving and they said they were going hunting...How could I have known they’d...do sothing like this..."
The Barbarian village chief explained urgently, his words were broken and his eyes were evasive.
"I truly didn’t know, sir. If I had known, how could I not have stopped them? They...they were just talking, not serious. I thought it was nothing..."
The more the Barbarian village chief spoke, the lower he stood.
By the last few words, his throat seed to get stuck, and he couldn’t make any sound.
He was well aware he was lying; he knew everything, just pretending not to see.
Finally, he lowered his head, as if giving up.
"Understood." Louis’s tone was calm.
There was no scolding, no extraneous words, just a nod to the executor beside him.
Within a few short steps, the noose was pulled up again.
When the aged body was hoisted into the air, everyone saw it clearly, but no one spoke, falling into a suffocating silence.
And Louis did not leave to end it all; he just raised a finger and gestured to the Red Tide knight beside him.
"Bring the others up." His tone was flat, without fluctuation.
Brought up were a few young Barbarian n, including the warehouse steward, the petroleum transporter, and a sentry on weekly shift.
They did not participate in the attack but coincidentally all had absences, switched shifts, or reallocated resources at crucial tis.
"The interrogation begins."
Louis did not speak personally, but the knight recorder read from a script to ask questions.
"When did you register the heating oil barrel as damaged for disposal?"
The question was aid at the warehouse manager, a Barbarian man in his thirties, who was sweating at the temples and stamred, "That...that barrel was indeed a bit damaged...I thought no one was using it, so I marked it..."
"But you didn’t report the loss, nor follow the recycling procedure."
The man tried to argue, his voice laced with panic: "I...I didn’t an to, I didn’t know they’d take it."
"So you knew they were going to act?"
"I...I heard sothing...but I didn’t participate...I swear!"
Louis looked at him without saying a word.
The second person was the transporter, who just kept shaking his head: "I was only moving things! I didn’t know it was petroleum!"
"Without an order, why would you do it? Did you check what was inside?"
"No..."
The third person was the sentry who was rotated off the post.
He was the youngest, glaring angrily at the questioning knight, not saying a word, clenching his teeth tightly.
"No words?" The knight glanced at him coldly.
He suddenly turned his head to look at the high platform and shouted, "You’re slaughtering us! We were just..."
Before he could finish, a Red Tide knight stepped forward and struck the back of his head with a blunt instrunt.
With a "thud," he fell to the ground, dragged straight to the gallows, with no chance to react.
The next steps were swift, the ropes had already been set up, with no unnecessary movents.
One by one, they were fitted with nooses, the entire process completed without a word.
So tried to struggle, but the Red Tide knight standing on either side of the gallows pressed their shoulders like nails, preventing any movent.
"Execute." The recorder shouted the final command.
The sound of the stage chanism falling was very light, but particularly clear in the surrounding silence.
Three shadows swayed slightly, then beca still.
The wind stopped on the execution ground, yet the hanging ropes still swung gently.
No one cried out for justice for them; instead, many quietly looked at the figure standing in the wind by the execution stage.
Sif wore the Red Tide cloak, her white hair lifted by the cold wind like a taut line.
She just watched them, one by one, dragged up, nooses tightened around their throats, then the chanism fell below their feet.
No expression on her face, she did not blink from beginning to end.
Even at the mont the bodies slowed and stopped swinging, she simply uttered lightly, "Too lenient for traitors."
The voice was not loud, but it made Visa standing beside her involuntarily clench his fist.
Yet, her heart was in turmoil; among those people, there were even familiar faces.
The sentry who had been knocked unconscious had once sat with her around a campfire in the snow, eating dried at; he was also a warrior of the Cold Moon Tribe.
Now his body hung on a wooden fra, at his feet only the trampled execution platform.
And not far in front of them, dozens of representatives brought from other Border Guard Villages were also Barbarians who had submitted.
All stood in neat rows, heads bowed in silence.
They wore leather jackets distributed by the Red Tide, new winter boots on their feet, naplates on their chests, engraved with numbers and nas, representing their status as Red Tide People, not Barbarians.
Occasionally, soone would look up at the swaying body, then quickly lower their head again, their expression pale.
They knew that those hanging today were not just a few lawbreakers.
It was the mark they couldn’t cross, the line many had secretly approached but never dared to breach.
Now that line had been dyed red, and no one dared test it again.
The handling was not over yet.
The laws of the Red Tide always had clear distinctions, and even those who remained silent would have to pay the price.
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