“I'm Grenfell, the owner of the dryad.”
The messenger handed a scroll to Grenfell, which he retrieved from a side satchel he carried on his person. Military messengers, expected to follow strict protocol, were never to discuss the situation surrounding the message nor were they to ever open one to read it. Each message scroll was a piece of parchment sealed with a wax seal. If the seal was broken before the recipient received the message, the messenger’s life was at stake, it was that serious. Grenfell quietly read the scroll and once done, handed it back to the messenger.
“Tell your commander I’ll comply and will be there within seven days. Also tell him that an apprentice will join me.”
The messenger nodded, then got back up onto his horse and trotted away. Grenfell looked in the direction of the leaving messenger.
“That messenger came from the Royal Knight division instructing us to support a military campaign. It seems the monsters in the forest have been getting out of hand of late, causing a lot of disruption to trade on the Shimmerstal Road.”
I scratch my head, something didn't quite make sense to me, so I asked,
“I didn't realise there was that much trade on that road that it would require an army to sort out?”
From what I could remember on the road, the only trade was in lumber and general goods heading to Obon. I hardly expected the military to throw up so much as a roadblock for as little as that. Grenfell shook his head.
“It's not about the trade on the Shimmerstal route. If the monsters can go rampant without check, it would only be a matter of time before they headed further east and disrupted the trade between Draguilet and Shimmerstal, which would be far more serious.”
Grenfell was referring to the kingdom’s main North-South trade route. Draguilet was the northernmost city laying on the eastern kingdom border, a vital trade route to Shimmerstal. In that case we couldn’t be too surprised that the royal military were involved. Grenfell gave a humph then moved back into the workshop.
“We’re going to give blacksmithing support. It's a bit of a different operation to what we did in the woodcutter's camp, we’ll be more focused on fixing armoury. There’ll also be far more people to contend with and probably a lot more work, but the support is better. Give me a hand, there's going to be a bit of preparation before we leave in two days' time.”
The Royal Knights had their own blacksmiths that looked after them, but the sheer size of the operation meant they needed added support. The old man wasn't kidding because unlike the trip to the woodcutter's camp, we planned to take our own mobile forge and that didn't include all the materials we needed for fixing swords, sharpening knives and horse shoeing. That didn’t include the tent, travelling food and other household kitchenware. I could see there wasn’t going to be much room on the wagon.
“Grenfell, would it be possible to send Karato the copies I made of that razor?”
“That’s not a problem, I’ll get a courier arranged for you through the adventurer guild. How many did you make?”
“I was able to make about fifty razors with the materials I could purchase.”
“Goodness, that was more than I anticipated and quick work. Did you use your skills for that?”
I nodded but didn’t add I finished them off almost two days after Schneider’s visit. There were enough shocks for one day.
The following morning Haruhime stopped me just as I was heading out the door of the inn.
“Hey Shane, this was dropped off for you by Orilay early this morning.”
It was a brand-new pair of leather shoes and laces. That was quick, and Christmas came early for me. Never in my life had I imagined that a pair of laced leather shoes would make me so happy. I think Haruhime realised that because she smiled from ear to ear. I think she enjoyed the fact that she handed me the shoes. When I tried them on right there and then it fitted me like a glove. I didn’t need to go back for any adjustment which spoke volumes about the level of workmanship.
Two days later we set out early in the morning. I had to cancel my accommodation with Hurihime especially as I had no idea how long I would be away. I was happy for her to hold onto the balance of the money I used to pre-book the room, after all, I planned to return soon enough. Little did I know how things would turn out.
Grenfell rented an open cart to carry all our goods. Because the rented cart needed to carry a lot of heavy goods, it needed a team of three horses to pull it. The horse layout was something I'd never seen before, even on earth. A third horse was spanned in front of the usual two horses, using a middle pull bar that ran between the two horses. In a town like Obon looking after horses could be an expensive affair because horse food had to be brought in from Shimmerstal at great cost. Looking at the surrounding terrain, it wasn't a fast stretch of imagination to realise there was little to no food for stock animals. As a result, horses from Obon tended to be lean, sinewy, and mean-looking animals. In our case, the old man decided on three horses rather than four because we only needed three and looking after four would be more expensive. I have to say here, that I never realised that horses were so flatulent. I’m not sure what they ate, but it stank whenever the gurgling noises from the horse’s rear ends released a foul odour that inevitably wafted over the front of the cart. They never showed that in the romanticised horse-riding movies. We left shortly after sunrise as the morning chill started to lift.
“Hey Shane? Is there a reason we needed to drag that along?”
He pointed to the heavy axe tied up on the side of the cart. The adventurer store wasn’t interested in buying it. Apparently, the item was too heavy for most adventurers and because of that the store considered it a specialist item. They were a generalist store and heavy fighting equipment didn’t fit their core business. Since I didn’t have anywhere to store it, I was hoping to get an opportunity to sell it somewhere, perhaps a battleground would do?
“Please don’t ask.”
I sighed. The thing was like an albatross around my neck. Right at that time we passed the mayor's tax brigade on the way out. We ignored them and they didn't stop us, and I suspected there was a reluctant respect for Grenfell. We could freely travel on the road without fear of attacks by monsters because during the last couple of weeks the Royal Military were regularly patrolling the road, keeping it clear of monsters. I rode shotgun next to the old man and decided to practice with my metal spheres again as a way of keeping me occupied, after all there wasn’t much to see or do on the road. He must've noticed when I was doing when he said,
“Practising again? Show me how you’re doing.”
I opened my hands and released the two spheres which began floating mid-air. They started to rotate around each other while glowing red then fused together like globules of hot wax in a lava lamp until they formed a single sphere. The sphere landed in my hand, totally cool to the touch. I then showed it to the old man, thinking he wanted to take a closer look. He shook his head, not needing to touch the sphere.
“You've really progressed well since you last showed me, and you no longer need to heal yourself; I see.”
I nodded. I applied a cooling layer on the outside of the sphere when I worked with them.
“I’ve also started to include my air skill which makes the spheres float. It takes a bit of concentration to do that, but I aim to eventually be able to fire them at high speed towards an object.”
The old man laughed at the thought of seeing something like that. It would replace the need for flying missiles like arrows.
“How far are you from being able to do that?”
“While I'm already capable of firing them a short distance, I’m still some time from being able to aim at something further away.”
He nodded as I continued practising, but he added,
“When we meet up with the military, I suggest you hold off on your training while we’re around them because they’re a lot more aware of their surroundings.”
I knew what the old man was alluding to. Looking at my spheres I realised that playing with those spheres in front of the soldiers would be like deliberately poking a hornet's nest. Soldiers were trained in the art of observation. Any seemingly insignificant things attracted their attention, especially for any overzealous military over sensitive to such things. I didn’t realise just how true that would be for me in the future.
It would take us three days to reach the military camp and the old man had no intention of spending the first night out on the road. To my surprise he turned off the road, deciding instead to spend the night in the woodcutter's camp, where we surprised Orilay and some of the other woodcutters I'd come to know. But it was the supervisor who came to meet us first at the gate.
“I didn't know work was that bad in Obon that you needed to come looking for it here?”
He chuckled as he slapped me hard on the shoulder. That hurt, and it always did, and yet somehow it seemed favourably familiar. Grenfell looked at him with a straight face and said,
“I didn't realise you missed us that much?”
There was much laughter after that. Since we arrived at lunchtime, we were invited to share a meal with the supervisor as we caught up on all the latest news.
“We know all about the military camp. A seven days ago, they commandeered our only blacksmith and only heaven knows when we'll see him again. We’ve tried to make do without him, but to be perfectly honest, we’re battling.”
He looked pretty dejected when he said that. Without thinking, I said,
“I could well imagine the amount of work that was waiting for the next blacksmith when he arrives.”
Both of them looked expectantly at me. I realised with what dumb ease I had just talked myself into that trap.
Before I slept that night and exhaustion overwhelmed me, I couldn't help but think of what events transpired after that lunchtime meeting. No sooner had we finished lunch, then Grenfell had me grinding axes double-time. I'm not sure how, but somehow, the woodcutters got wind of my presence, because they all turned up for some or other thing that needed work. Even the ladies of the kitchen made a turn by me, chatting away with me as I sharpened their knives. If I didn’t utilise my skills, there was no way on that planet I could have finished those knives in time.
Since no one knew when the next blacksmith would arrive at the woodcutter's camp again, I specially treated all the axes. For each blade I tempered the sharp edges by hardening the points against notching and finishing it with a small bit of hardened steel to the tips. Although it couldn't prevent notching, it would take a lot more force to damage the blades. I hoped that the sharpness of the axes would hold out until someone could look at them again. In between all those, I helped Grenfell fit horseshoes by firing them in the furnace and shaping them as needed.
I had to give it to the old man, he wasn't idle. He busied himself with reshoeing the camp's horses that needed urgent work. Grenfell used a piece of stiff leather and charcoal to trace the bottom shape of the horse’s hoof. That alone was a full-time job and how he managed to finish that evening I have no idea, but both of us only finished the last horse late that evening. The camp team kindly kept some food aside for us, so we didn't miss out on dinner. Woodcutters far past their beauty sleep time decided to stay up and chat with us around the campfire. We chatted and laughed into the late hours of the night and eventually when I made it to bed, I quickly fell asleep to the lullaby of night-time hoots and calls of the forest.
Early and fresh the next morning I washed my face and started to pack. Luckily, the camp tent of the earlier blacksmith lay available to us, and we didn't have to pack a tent as well, saving us some time. While I packed, I realised the camp had a pleasant feel to it, the way it felt when I first arrived so many weeks ago. Since there had been no follow-up monster signs in the area, I could sense no general feeling of anxiety with the people which I could only attribute to the presence of the military in the area.
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Unexpectedly, many of the camp folks arrived to wave us goodbye leading to teary eyes all over again. They way they performed I could swear we stayed for more than two weeks. But even I had to confess I enjoyed their company again, even for just a few hours. Strictly speaking, they were my first work friends I made on that world, and I would always remember them. Just before we left the camp supervisor left us with a warning.
“I know things have been going better since the monsters left the area but be careful, you two still need to spend at least one night out on the road near the forest. Don't get complacent and stick as close to any other merchants as you can, they're bound to have armed escorts, even if they're not responsible for looking after you.”
We understood what the supervisor was implying. Merchants didn't share resources that cost them money, especially when that came to personal protection. It would be akin to leeching off them if people were so brazen to take the defensive strength from another merchant by pretending to become part of the wagon train without financially contributing, effectively watering down their defence. People like that soon earned themselves a bad name in the trading community, and in the trading business where reputation meant everything, having a poor standing could close their business very quickly. However, just being near an armed group meant monsters or bandits couldn’t ignore them and needed to deal with them as well. We could as an option offer a financial contribution to the merchants for the use of their armed escorts over the night, however that remained pure speculation on my part with my limited experience. We thanked the camp supervisor for his kind consideration and soon joined the main road again. As we left the camp I asked Grenfell,
“Why didn’t we get any protection?”
“I felt the road was reasonably safe, now that the military were patrolling and besides, there are still a few old tricks up my sleeve.”
I was certain the old man had personal history with the military, which is why the military messenger came to see the old man in the first place. To what old tricks Grenfell still held up his sleeve, remained to be seen. I still couldn't help but feel uneasy. Just like tumultuous dark clouds form the first cone of a tornado, so I sensed the beginning of challenging times ahead. While Grenfell drove the cart, I put more effort into my training with the spheres using them like office stress balls. He must have sensed my unease to his reply because he started chuckling. I ignored him and focused on my practice, my thermal control of the spheres seemed as good as I was going to get it. My new sphere training regime included launching a sphere out of my hand and then automatically retrieving it. Though it was a simple action, it involved complex control. I could shoot a metal sphere out of my hand at high speed, but my problem lay in retrieving it. Newton's law of force applied. Retrieval force equalled launching force minus air resistance. In layman's words, it meant whatever force I used to launch the object, I needed to apply in the opposite direction for it to come back to me. Which was fine if I just played catch with myself, but not when I tried to kill something like a monster. I could send the sphere on a one-way trip and then I wouldn't have to worry about returning it, but then I needed to carry many metal spheres on me, just weighing me down. For the moment I decided to just keep practising the usual way, after all I had no intention of asking Grenfell to stop the cart to search for a sphere every time I happened to lose one. Naturally, I had more than one retrieval exercise because I wasn't perfect. But because I was firing the spheres ahead of me, there was an opportunity to pick them up as we passed on the road. My ability to retrieve them off the road, improved to the point I purposely let them drop just to pick them up again. Seeing that and without missing a beat the old man commented on my improvement.
“Show off.”
I started laughing and offered him the spheres to try, which of course he refused. Instead, he passed me the reins.
“Your turn to try, besides, you need to learn this.”
I couldn’t fault him there, so I shifted over the seat to the right-hand side as he climbed around me to ride shotgun.
“You can hold both reins if you want better control. When you want to give your hands a rest, just hold both reins with one hand. Remember that you’re using the reins to control the front horse and forget the ones at the back, they’ll just follow. If you want them to go faster, tap the front horse with the reins and click your tongue, twice. If you want the horses to slow down, then pulled back evenly on the reins and say 'whoa'. If you want to steer left pull the left reign and do the opposite if you want to go right. It's as simple as that. Now I'm going to take a nap and unless we're attacked by monsters, there's no need to wake me up.”
And then he promptly fell asleep. How we managed to fall asleep in that chair, only he would know.
The forest road, closely bordered by tall trees, was barely wide enough for two carts to pass each other comfortably. One benefit of the trees was that they formed an arch over the road filtering out the warm sunlight allowing for a much cooler, comfortable ride even during the hottest hours. The trees also reduced the wind levels, which tended to make the atmosphere cool, but humid.
Although we met no monsters on the road, there were some tricky bits to navigate for me. For instance, the old man forgot to tell me about the handbrake which might seem like a minor oversight until I headed on a downhill and discovered the horses only had minor breaking ability. Cart horses, bred for constant pulling, were not good at stopping. Expecting those horses to stop a load carrying tons of equipment, while assisted by the force of gravity, was expecting far too much from the poor animals. But one first had to understand the nature of the road before explaining my situation.
When I thought of a road, I generally thought of the mostly straight, tar sealed highways at home. Even the unsealed roads there were well graded and smoothed out. The forest road we travelled on looked nothing like the Appian Way, instead it gently meandered through the forest making it difficult to see more than a hundred meters ahead. Although I couldn't see the reason for the meandering there were no doubt slight undulations in the terrain or troublesome trees and rocky areas that may have required the original road builders to avoid those obstacles.
Sometimes ruts formed in the dirt road at various places, especially where standing rainwater pooled. Even after the water dried up, the ruts became like concrete channels, funnelling cartwheels into holes that were difficult to get out of. In some cases, the ruts were so deep the wheel axles could jam on the ground, effectively making the cart go nowhere. At that point going forward or backwards with a cart load of heavy goods became an exercise in futility. All that one could do in that scenario would be to empty the cart, span the horses to the rear end of the cart and get them to pull it out backwards. That could easily take up to four hours, a serious delay for any merchant.
There were the small but serious downhills formed by small valleys the road crossed over. Next to the presence of monsters, those fifty-meter downhill valleys were the most troublesome events because it required a part skill but mostly luck to control the cart. The cart being a rental also didn't help my peace of mind because I seriously doubted the maintenance routine on it. Especially since it required Herculean strength to hold the handbrake down, I couldn't help but pray we would make it down the valley. Weirdly enough I think it was the experience of the horses that saved the day because, I doubted it was the first time they had travelled that road. Instinctively they knew when to swing left or right, or when to go slower making it easier for me to focus on applying brakes. The wheel brakes consisted of a long metal pad pressing from the top against the metal band on the outer rims of the two front wheels. The left-hand side brake operated via a foot pedal and with a stick handle for the right. Both the pedal and the stick lay on my right-hand side. The problem with metal-on-metal type brakes easily overheated and were exceedingly difficult to manually operate. Master-slave cylinder technology didn’t exist and only my pure muscle power and persistence slowed the cart. At those times I even used my air skill to cool the right-hand brake pad down it being the only brake I could see from my vantage point. I couldn’t see the left-hand side brake pad on the left side of the cart and got an odd whiff of burning iron that reminded me of the distinctive metal smell of train brakes at a train station. Battling like that, I couldn’t help but think the kingdom needed trains.
Through all that chaos, the old man slept like a drunkard on the street corner, somehow staying propped up while the world wobbled around him. He finally woke up on a perfect straight as if nothing had happened. When he discovered that we already reached the third valley, he seemed shocked.
“What? I thought you'd wake me up at the first valley. How did you manage to get through that okay?”
That was simply great, he could have told me that before we climbed onto the rollercoaster of death. However, I felt exhausted, and I think he realised that because he offered to swap places with me again. All I could do that time was to sit there like a mindless zombie while trying to recover because unlike him, I couldn't sleep while sitting up on that cart. On occasion he casted the odd glance my way, as if to check that I was still okay.
I wasn’t familiar with the road past the turnoff from to the woodcutter’s camp, so I had no idea when we would stop for the evening. Grenfell said we would only arrive at our campsite around sunset because our overnight stay with the woodcutters increased our journey time by at least four hours. It wasn't ideal arriving in the late evening because the night creatures started to emerge at that time. Since we had no choice, we just trotted on. Luckily, the road remained reasonably flat and the horses, although tired, managed to hold out. For the first time I appreciated their Obon heritage, they might look thin and wiry, but they were tougher than they looked and made of sturdier stuff.
When we arrived at our destination, the old man pulled into a small meadow next to the road where someone cut back the forest to allow camping. Although grass grew freely, I noticed various spots where the grass looked flattened, no doubt earlier merchants who camped for the night. Unfortunately, we were the only ones camping that night, making me a little apprehensive. Since it started getting dark, we quickly needed to prioritise our wood collection so that we didn’t have to go enter the forest when night fell.
For some reason, the old man didn't seem too concerned about it. As I started setting up camp in the middle of the meadow, he busied himself gathering wood and keeping busy with something else. At first, I couldn't see what he was doing, but then I realised he was setting up some alarms. When he finally arrived, I asked him, he showed me one of his trip alarms. I suggested setting up a few snare traps because there was a lot of animal sign in the grass. We could have a rabbit for the pot. For some reason he seemed quite surprised that I had knowledge about something like that as he didn't take me for the trapper type.
“Where did you learn to do something like that?”
“My father took me on many trips into the wilderness and taught me how to forage and catch my own food.”
“Your father seems like an interesting guy. I'd like to meet him someday.”
“I'd like that, unfortunately, he disappeared while I was still young, and I haven't seen him since. Perhaps he'll pop up somewhere one day.”
Grenfell didn't say anything further and just nodded. Something deep inside me told me that I would find my father in that world, something I dearly wanted to do.
“Quickly set up a trap over there. I’ll watch how you do it.”
He pointed to a part of the forest he hadn’t set up traps yet.
I set up a few loop-snare traps using peg triggers. That involved a bit of rope, one end tied onto a prestressed branch, the other end made into a loop on the ground. Two notched sticks kept the looped rope in place, one stick was pushed into the ground, the other tied to the loop. Then the notched edges of the sticks were locked together, only remaining connected because the rope stayed under tension. When an animal disturbed the rope, the notched edges dislodged, activating the trap. The looped rope pulled tight around the limb or arm of the animal and pull it up like a fish on a line. It was a primitive arrangement but highly effective if set correctly. The art of success lay in camouflaging the trap in a natural way so that animals couldn't see or smell it, otherwise they avoided it.
The alarms and traps we set out would at least give us some peace of mind as there were only two of us to guard that night. We decided on taking four-hour shifts with the old man starting first, seeing he slept so well in the cart earlier that day he should already be well rested.
We oriented the tent with its entrance facing the campfire and twenty meters behind that, the road. We collected enough wood, and I cut up enough small logs to last us the evening. We parked our cart behind the tent, and if anything made it past the traps we set out in the forest, it needed to go around the cart first, making it visible to the night guard. We brushed the horses down and fed a small amount of grain to supplement the grass in the area. Unfortunately, for safety’s sake, they couldn’t roam free, so we staked two on the one side of the tent and one on the other. Although our horses were primarily daylight animals their eyes and noses were far superior to humans when it came to noticing night-time predators, and because horses were easily spooked at night, they behaved like extra guards.
We didn’t have lunch earlier because we had to make up time, but luckily our dinner consisted of heated leftovers, compliments of the ladies of the woodcutter’s camp kitchen. The old man chuckled while he munched on his food. According to him, it was the first time he knew of that the ladies made food for someone travelling on the road, a point he raised more than once that evening.
“Yeah, I got it.”
The ladies obviously favoured me, although I’m not sure what I did to deserve that, and when I said that to Grenfell, he just shook his head, saying it was my fault and then called me an idiot. When I thought about it, I knew what he was referring to, but I really appreciated their attention and when we went that way again, I would do something special for them.
I slept like a log.
Despite all the preparations we made to protect the camp, there were no disturbances that night. Surprisingly, we managed to catch a rare forest rabbit in one of the traps, and our dinner menu was set. From my father's descriptions, I could only assume we caught a forest rabbit. He always reminded me that a pair of forest rabbits made for good eating and could always be traded for a day's wages. They weren't that prolific that one could earn a regular wage from them, but on the odd occasion supplied a bit of pocket money or a delicious meal. Forest rabbits looked like earth rabbits, but were far faster on their feet, the only way they survived in a forest full of hungry monsters. There was no way to chase one down, and even actively hunting them with a bow required good skill. Trapping for them was definitely the only way for me to get hold of one at that stage.
I showed Grenfell the rabbit we caught after dismantling all the remaining traps and alarms and he looked particularly happy, no doubt drooling when thinking about our dinner. Just like on earth, trapped animals needed to be cleaned as soon as possible to prevent the meat from going off and becoming inedible. After that, the old man made me put traps up every night, whenever possible.
The next morning, after we been riding on the road for a couple of hours, we came across a burnt-up demolished cart lying in a small grassy clearing next to the road. Worthless broken goods lay strewn around the area and judging by the large pawmarks in the ground around the cart there was little doubt in my mind it was a recent monster attack on a travelling merchant.
“Dire wolf tracks… and possibly ogres judging by the state of the cart.”
Grenfell dryly commented after casting a quick look at the spoor on the ground. It was an unwelcome discovery and a stark reminder to be vigilant. Wordlessly, we travelled past the sorry looking wreck, only imagining what unfortunate things those people went through, probably best we didn't know. But then something red in the wreckage caught my eye. To Grenfell’s surprise I stopped our cart to investigate the wreck from closer. It was obvious others had already removed any valuables or bodies after the monster attack. Sifting through the rubble, my heart suddenly sank when underneath some heavy planking I managed to pull out a distinct red coloured, ostentatious looking piece of leather armour. Or at least what remained of it.