The Road Courts

The Road Courts travel because misconduct travels. They judge forced works, requisitions, abused musters, emergency marches, command experiments, stolen carts, abandoned labourers, and orders that saved a road by breaking the people beside it. Their benches may be wagons, milestone steps, bridge sheds, or rain-soaked courtyards. Witnesses smell of wet wool, smoke, fear, horse sweat, and ink. Commanders hate delay and call it strategic cost. Judges answer that a realm which cannot accuse its own machinery has already surrendered. The courts are Ordran's conscience, and therefore always under siege. Their authority reaches back to the first march where a victorious commander was made to answer for the labourers broken under his road. Every generation relearns the same lesson: necessity without judgement becomes occupation by another name.