A week after their unfortunate dinner, Ozren’s older brothers prepared to ride off to the countryside with fifty men - guards from the keep and a few villagers who wanted to make some coin. They were saddling their horses, checking their provisions for the last time, and saying goodbye to their wives.
They probably had twice the numbers of any band of bandits, but you never know how an animal will react when you press it in the corner. Some will yield, hoping to save their lives, and others will fight when it remains the only option. Ozren looked at all the mounted men and thought how some of their horses could return without a rider. But we do what we have to.
Ivan didn’t come to send his children away. In a day, Vlad would be pointing his sword at another man. Stan would be holding another lord’s hand. So Ozren held the fork and didn’t wait long before he put it to work.
“We take matters into our own hands.” - his father had said.
So he didn’t allow any of the gardeners to help him. His brothers were doing far more dangerous things for the family. He could do this on his own. This way, he would be the only one punished by his father’s wrath if the orchard remained empty again.
He started by pruning the trees, cutting off the weak branches that only drain their life away without bearing fruit. That alone took him days. He climbed the trees when the creeky ladder he found in the shack turned out to be short and fell more than once. Then he gathered the dead leaves and branches on the ground in piles and threw them away. When he was done, the orchard was once again covered in a beautiful grass carpet.
He whitewashed the trees to protect them from insects and watered them when the clouds found their rain too precious to share.
“My lord, Ozren.” - the housemaid called to him - “Dinner is served.”
Her calling him for dinner with his father marked the end of the day. But as the weeks passed, he got tired earlier from the break-back work.
“I’ll just sit under the tree for a minute.” - he said to himself.
But it’s never just sitting when you’re tired.
He often fell asleep before the sun had even set. On nights like this, the housemaid found him lying in the grass and helped him to his chambers, where Ozren fell on the bed face first and slept with his dirty clothes on, not even eating. Some nights he even slept in the garden. His brothers didn’t have a safe place to spend the night with bandits scouring the woods and treacherous noblemen ready to poison them, so why should he?