“For me?” I shouted. Without moving away from the eggs still sizzling in the iron skillet, I stuck my head out through the window, looking behind me, two rooms away in the sitting room where Herral was turned around awkwardly in his chair to look back at me. Returning my attention to the eggs, I lifted the pan from the flames a little to reduce the heat while using a flat metal spatula to turn them over one after another.
“Yes, specifically you, by name,” Herral returned a shout from the other room.
“What kind of request is it?”
“Escort.”
“An escort request huh…” I muttered, remembering the women I’d met yesterday evening who were on their way to Smithtown to escort someone back up north. “Who am I supposed to escort? And who made the request?” I asked.
“The escortee is the one who made the request,” he explained. Huh, that wasn’t very common, usually the request would come from a parent who needed their child escorted, or a husband their wife, things like that. If someone requested an escort for themselves, it was a merchant, or possibly a merchant caravan. But that still begged the question, why ask after me personally? While contemplating that, I transferred the eggs from the skillets to a number of round plates. “It gets better,” I could hear the laugh in his voice, “it’s actually from a Blessed.”
“Huh?!” I shouted back, fumbling slightly as I rinsed the skillet with cool water. After shaking off the excess droplets and leaving it to air dry, I lined the plates on my arms and carried them from the kitchen to the sitting room. “Why would a Blessed need an escort?” I asked once I finished picking up the plates.
“No clue, but the pay was great.”
“This sounds really fishy you know,” I countered as I entered the main sitting room and began to hand out the plates of eggs. It was the home of my god, Herral, where our following congregated in the morning to exchange info and talk about anything newsworthy before we all left for the day. Through the windows placed high on the walls, the first few rays of light were beginning to slip into the dim room. It was about time for everyone to get going; I supposed I would be heading out to meet the one who put in the request as soon as I finished breakfast.
“In any case, the Blessed who made the request was a woman by the name of Gwen.”
“G-Gwen?” I stammered. “Why would they need an escort, she’s ridiculously strong!” She could probably beat me in a fight with both arms tied behind her back. With Sharya to back her up with healing magic, what use could I be? Herral just shrugged in response as he picked up his fork and knife to eat. A few chuckles from the others listening to the conversation drew a sigh from me as I headed back toward the kitchen. The sound of the door opening stopped me short.
When I turned back, there in the front entrance stood the women we had just been talking about. “Perfect timing!” Herral stood and greeted them with a slight bow. They returned much deeper bows before advancing into the room. Since I was the only one on my feet, I grabbed two extra chairs and hurriedly placed them in front of the table where Herral sat.
“You should have told me we were going to have guests, I would have made more food,” I grumbled just loud enough for him to hear before rushing back to the kitchen to make two more plates of eggs.
“Come, sit, food will be ready in a moment,” Herral invited them jovially.
“Oh, that’s fine, we ate just a little earlier,” Gwen answered.
“Don’t worry about it, you’re traveling, right? You need all the food you can get.”
“Then we’ll kindly accept your offer.” While they got through that formality, I tapped the circle on the stove to relight the fire and I cracked a few more eggs into the pan. With a small thought, I pushed more mana into the spell to up the heat and fry the eggs quickly. Since I’m sure they had eaten earlier, I prepared smaller portions this time and got them out the door as quickly as I could, returning to wash the pan once more afterward.
“Ah wait.” I’d forgotten something. Glancing around, I figured it out and opened a pantry to collect another two sets of eating utensils. I returned to the front room and deposited the girls’ forks and knives with a small apology before taking a seat in front of my own food, at the same table as Herral and the women, but off to the side.
“Hmm, he can cook too, this looks promising,” Gwen grinned at me. I just answered with a chuckle while starting to eat the quickly cooling food. A few minutes passed with no more conversation as everyone focused on the meal. Once finished, Eunice came by and collected the dirty dishes to wash, and we got down to business.
“So about the pay, how much is it exactly?” Herral said they were paying a lot, but I wanted a solid figure before I gave the final ok.
“Five hundred gold pieces.” That gave me pause. Five hundred for an escort? Wasn’t that too much? I stopped there, thinking through it differently. I usually averaged about ten gold each day collecting manastones, they were offering fifty times that. But… I started to figure on the time required. The trip to and from Smithtown would take almost a week. Then another week to Flaren, and a third week back. That was the key here, twenty one days collecting manastones would net me a little more than two hundred gold. They must have asked the shop owners here how much they would pay for low grade manastones like the one I’d shown them and used that to estimate my income, then offered double that, if I accounted for them adding on travel and equipment expenses, and overestimating a bit. I suppressed a chuckle when I realized that their slight overestimation turned out to be about three or four days worth of gold, not wanting to say anything, or they might drop their offer some.
After thinking that through for a minute, I nodded. “Sounds good. Give me some time to get set and we can head out.”
“We’ll be waiting here for now,” Gwen said, and I left to get ready.
It only took thirty minutes or so throw together the provisions I would need from the store room where we all threw extra gear, like camping supplies and dried rations. I didn’t need to pack that much since we would be stopping here on the way back as well. All in all, it still weighed slightly less than when my bag was loaded with manastones.
When I returned to the front room, Gwen and Sharya stood, “All set?” they asked together. I nodded.
“Allistor.” I turned back for a moment when Herral called me. “First hundred was up front, collect the rest from their god you get to Flaren. Also…” Herral waved me to come closer then whispered to me, “tell Vanne I said hi.” He gave me a wink. That was strange, I didn’t know that he knew Vanne, I’d have to ask about that later. For now I just nodded and waved goodbye.
Since the women were already prepared, we left town immediately. We were getting a bit of a late start, but we made good time. Walking east, we had made it to the lowlands by midday. It was a naturally swampy area, so we stuck to the road which cut between sections of marsh. More of a path than a road, it was only marked by the well-worn tracks of merchant caravans that traveled frequently between Smithtown and Kirshe. Under the noon sun, we munched on some of our rations for lunch while we walked. It was a peaceful day, sunny, and without a monster in sight.
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“So, why did you ask me to come anyway?” I asked between bites of food.
“You helped us out yesterday, and we could use a hand on our way back, you know?” I considered that for a minute, before I finally got it.
“Ah, you mean for the escort back.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she nodded. “When we were surrounded by kobolds, we would have been fine without the help, but only because of Sharya.”
“Ahhh,” I realized what she meant right before she explained.
“By abandoning defense, I could rely on my blessing to mitigate damage long enough to kill a few kobolds. Then I could defeat the rest without a problem, and have Sharya heal my injuries afterward, it’s reckless but effective, we’ve had to do it before. However, we can’t fight recklessly like that while we’re defending someone. So we need another pair of hands.”
“And that’s where I come in.” It made sense. “But why not just bring another person from your own house with you?”
Sharya sighed and put a hand to her head, while Gwen explained, “We were supposed to have a third, but Dominik took off on his own when we were supposed to leave.” She mimicked Gwen, rubbing her temple, both clearly irritated at the person. “He’s always doing stuff like that, making life hard for the rest of us.”
“Ahh…” Like yesterday, I didn’t know the circumstances between her and her comrades, so I couldn’t really offer any comment. We walked in silence for a little while longer, eventually leaving the wetlands behind. Grassy hills spread for a long way, and we spent the remainder of the day threading through the hilltops until the sun disappeared, and we set up camp for the night.
We slept lightly, rotating so one could remain on watch at all times until morning, when we packed up and set off once more. As the sun rose, we passed over a slow moving creek that wound through the hilly landscape, and continued walking through the day, putting a small forest and a lake behind us before settling for the next night.
On the third day, we trekked along the Laruda river, coming close to Smithtown. The town had been set up downriver, in the middle of a pine forest. The trees were really thick, so we walked close to the riverside where they thinned out somewhat. The path was marked with the tracks of the numerous wagons that had traveled through as well.
“We should be there a little after noon… we made good time,” Gwen commented.
“There weren’t any monsters,” Sharya added. She didn’t need to say it, but that was why we’d made such good time. We hadn’t even seen a single goblin the whole way out so far.
“Most of them gather around the larger cities like Flaren, so there are hardly any this far out,” I explained. And Smithtown really was far out, if we continued walking for half a day past it, we would reach the ocean. Without any monsters, the outlying cities were generally peaceful; very few gods settled down in them since there was no need for them there. There was a good chance that there was a single god with a small following in Smithtown, or possibly none at all.
I hadn’t been out this way for quite some time, at least a year, but I remembered that unlike Kirshe, Smithtown was set up directly in the middle of the forest, not in a clearing, so we wouldn’t see it until we arrived. I explained this to the girls as we walked along the riverside.
“Wow, that’s the opposite of Flaren, there are fields as far as you can see in every direction,” Gwen explained.
“Ooh really?” I’d never been there before.
“Yeah, it’s an amazing view.”
“Especially at sunset,” Sharya commented, and Gwen nodded in enthusiastically.
“Wait.” Gwen put her arm out suddenly and we all came to an abrupt stop.
A moment later, I heard the rustle of branches and the crunch of fallen pine needles. We all reached for our weapons, shrinking into a closer formation. I hadn’t expected to run into any monsters out here.
Figures appeared from between the trees ahead, as soon as they came into view, we saw they were actually human, and our collective anxiety evaporated. I looked over the dozen or so people ahead, before another rustle to my left drew a glance to another dozen standing to our side. The lot of them were dressed in rugged clothes that were torn and dirty, like they’d been wearing them for a long time. They were armed with an assortment of crude weapons, ranging from farming tools like spades and sickles to a few straight swords. That was when I realized something was off. It took a moment of thinking to figure it out.
Bandits, I realized. With the lack of monsters in the area, banditry might actually be possible.
“Drop all your belongings,” commanded one of them.
“What’s going on?” Gwen asked in a hushed voice, reaching for her sword again.
“Just bandits,” I answered. I touched her arm to keep her from drawing her sword, then stepped forward. The bandits were obviously anxious at my nonchalant attitude as I rolled up my sleeve. Once rolled all the way up, it revealed the mark on my shoulder, a set of interconnected lines which held subtle, but unearthly glow; it was the mark of my god’s blessing.
“Blessed!” a few shouted, and within moments, the bandits had fled back into the pines.
As we continued leisurely on our way, Gwen asked, “What are bandits?”
“People who rob travelers of their money and belongings to get by.” She leveled me with a look that said ‘no way.’ I put my hands up in response. “Where you come from, the only people outside the city are Blessed and monsters, right? For a thief, coming into contact with either means death, so of course there are no bandits there, you know?” In a dangerous place like that, banditry would be suicidal. “However, there are no monsters around here, so it’s different.”
“Hmm…” Gwen muttered, eyebrows creased deeply in thought for some time as she considered my words. It didn’t look like she would have a response for a while, so I just shrugged, it wasn’t that important anyway.
“If those were thieves, why didn’t we stop them?” Sharya finally asked.
“We already have a job to do, stopping to hunt down a bunch of bandits would just slow us down. We wouldn’t get paid for it, and more would just take their place anyway,” I summed up the issue. We had no responsibility to do anything about them, and I had no desire to kill living things in the first place.
“I see, it would slow us down wouldn’t it… I still don’t think it’s right to just let them off but…” Sharya mumbled.
“If it ever becomes a real problem, Smithtown will just put up a bounty and someone will stop them.”
“I guess so…”
“Then…” Gwen started, but stopped because we all knew what she was going to ask, and also the answer. Why had I helped them fight off those monsters yesterday? Because those were monsters; it was our duty to protect people from them. It was the reason all three of us had received a god’s blessing in the first place. All three of us nodded, affirming that we were already on the same page with the unspoken question.
It only took a little while longer walking before Smithtown seemed to materialize out of thin air amidst the trees. It was a tiny town, even in comparison to Kirshe, composed of no more than a twenty or thirty little wooden buildings. Even so, it was quite lively. After asking a few people for directions, we found the man we were supposed to talk to and gave him the good news.
“Really? That’s great!” he responded. His name was Rowe, a common laborer if his clothes, wrinkled and sweat-stained, were any indication.
“We’ve been instructed to offer you passage to Flaren for the wedding if you want,” Sharya said.
“Ah, of course. I should finish my work today though, can you wait until tomorrow before we leave?”
“Of course, we already planned on it. We need to get some rest ourselves.”
“I see, that’s good then. Where are we meeting?”
“We’ll wake you up at first light to leave, does that sound alright?” Gwen asked.
He nodded, “Yes, that should work.” He pointed out his house, visible from where he was working since the town was so small, and we took our leave.
With that, we split up for the remainder of the day, each taking care of our provisions, equipment, and lodging separately. I sat on a rock in the little town square, oiling and sharpening the blade of my sword while I watched the sun sink between the trees. When it disappeared over the horizon, I stood, cleaning and sheathing my trusted weapon. I stretched, giving a big yawn after the days spent walking, then headed back to the tiny inn. As I laid down for the night, I looked up at the unfamiliar ceiling. So far everything had gone well, but it was the journey to Flaren that would be the hard part. I’d never been up to the big city before. It made me wonder, what were the buildings like, how many gods were there, and what kind of monsters would appear?
“Only one way to find out.” I rolled over and shut my eyes for the night.