Inside the foundry, the bandits feasted. They sat at a long table eating from the same pot.
Since its conquest, Brooke's domain had become something halfway between a fortress and a den.
In places the furnaces still worked, not as they once had, but enough to keep portions of the structure warm.
Enough to make the men inside forget, for an hour or two at a time, that beyond those walls the world was frozen, starving, and slowly dying.
Each was given a serving of what they had managed to cook from the supplies they scavenged…
Or what their hostages had managed to cook. After all, it was a brave new world, and feeding those who did not work, even if they were hostages was a fool's errand.
Most of the hostages had learned not to look directly at the food for too long. Hunger could make people stupid, and stupidity got punished quickly here.
